On Tuesday, the Senate unanimously passed The Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Nonconsensual Edits Act, or DEFIANCE, a bipartisan bill that will allow victims of non-consensual deepfake pornography to sue perpetrators in civil court and pursue damages tied to this flagrant violation of consent and privacy.

The DEFIANCE Act Explained

Victims who can be identified in nonconsensual explicit deepfakes will be able to claim up to $150,000 in base damages, and up to $250,000 if the incident was connected to “actual or attempted sexual assault, stalking, or harassment.” The law will allow victims to collect further damages caused by the perpetrator’s actions, such as the loss of wages. It will also enable courts to impose restraining orders on perpetrators, order the removal of the deepfakes in question, and allow victims to file under a pseudonym to protect their privacy.

Origins of The DEFIANCE Act

The DEFIANCE Act was originally put together in response to the explicit and violent Taylor Swift deepfakes that overwhelmed social media platforms in January. But celebrities are far from the only victims of deepfake pornography. Cases of teenage girls being abused via deepfakes by their own classmates are on the rise, and women in politics are now commonly targeted by these attacks, too. Given that victims have often been denied justice as law enforcement struggled to find ways to charge perpetrators with a new type of crime not yet addressed by lawmakers, the passage of this bill is a crucial step in catching up to the nefarious side of AI technology and holding perpetrators accountable. 

Fortunately, stopping the creation and proliferation of deepfake pornography is a rare bipartisan goal pursued equally by lawmakers from contending ideological corners. Given the unopposed passage of the DEFIANCE Act through the Senate, we hope that the House will follow suit and advance the bill to the White House for signature.

Additional Bills Complimenting the DEFIANCE Act

The DEFIANCE Act was passed as another bipartisan bill makes its way through the halls of Congress: the TAKE IT DOWN ACT, introduced in June, strives to criminalize the creation and distribution of nonconsensual deepfake pornography (previous criminalization efforts have been unsuccessful as lawmakers failed to pass the bills), and would require social media platforms and websites to mandatorily remove this deepfake content as soon as it is reported. 

At Reality Defender, we champion any and all serious efforts to curtail and prevent the malicious and abusive use of dangerous deepfakes, and we look forward to seeing these laws enforced, turning the tide of deplorable nonconsensual AI-generated explicit content flooding digital platforms daily.