Deepfake revenge porn attacked under bipartisan bill proposed by Capito, Young

U.S. Sens. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) and Todd Young (R-IN) on June 18 signed on as original cosponsors of a bipartisan bill that seeks to protect victims from revenge pornography, formally known as non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII) abuse.

“This is a sensible step to protect Americans and establish appropriate guardrails,” Sen. Young said on Tuesday.

The Tools to Address Known Exploitation by Immobilizing Technological Deepfakes on Websites and Networks (TAKE IT DOWN) Act, S. 4569, would criminalize the publication of NCII — including AI-generated NCII, a.k.a. deepfake pornography — and require social media and similar websites to put in place procedures to remove such content upon notification from a victim, according to a bill summary provided by the lawmakers.

“Social media platforms and those that distribute revenge porn need to be held accountable,” Sen. Capito said. “Our bill will make sure that even computer-generated deep fakes will not be allowed to stay online.”

If enacted, S. 4569 would protect and empower victims of real and deepfake NCII by criminalizing the publication of NCII in interstate commerce; permitting the good faith disclosure of NCII, such as to law enforcement, in narrow cases; and protecting lawful speech, the summary says.

“We are increasingly seeing instances where generative AI is used to create exploitative images of an individual based on a clothed image,” said Sen. Young. “This bipartisan bill builds on existing federal law to protect Americans, particularly young women, from harmful deepfakes and establishes a requirement for websites to take down this type of explicit and disturbing material.”

The TAKE IT DOWN Act is supported by IBM and more than three dozen organizations, such as the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, the Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network, the Center for American Progress, the American Psychological Association, the National Association of Chiefs of Police, the NCAA, the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee, TechNet, the National Organization for Women, and the Institute for Family Studies, among others.

“I am proud to stand with my colleagues to help stop this sickening practice that has become far too common,” said Sen. Capito, who along with Sen. Young was joined by 11 other original cosponsors of S. 4569, including U.S. Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), in introducing the measure with bill sponsor U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).