Tell Congress To End AI-Generated Deepfakes And Revenge Porn
By Americans for Responsible Innovation
More and more American citizens are falling victim to the spread of lifelike AI-generated non-consensual intimate images (NCII).
AI technology is increasingly being weaponized to produce hyper-realistic digital forgeries, often targeting women and children.
Congress must act swiftly to pass the DEFIANCE Act and TAKE IT DOWN Act to protect our most vulnerable.
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The Honorable Charles Schumer, Majority Leader
United States Senate
The Honorable Mike Johnson, Speaker
United States House of Representatives
The Honorable Mitch McConnell, Minority Leader
United States Senate
The Honorable Hakeem Jeffries, Minority Leader
United States House of Representatives
Dear Leader Schumer, Leader McConnell, Speaker Johnson, and Leader Jeffries:
We write to urge you to take action this Congress to crack down on the spread of AI-generated non-consensual intimate images (NCII). AI technology is increasingly being weaponized to produce hyper-realistic digital forgeries, often targeting women and children. These AI-generated non-consensual images and videos are distributed without victims’ consent, causing profound and lasting emotional, social, and financial damage.
As we near the end of the 118th Congress, we urge you to pass the Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits (DEFIANCE) Act and the Tools to Address Known Exploitation by Immobilizing Technological Deepfakes on Websites and Networks (TAKE IT DOWN) Act. By passing this legislation, Congress can strike back against the spread of harmful AI-generated NCII and support victims seeking justice, privacy, and an end to their harassment.
Enduring Harm
While political deepfakes have dominated the news this year because of the presidential election, the vast majority of deepfakes are used to target women. Sensity AI, a research company that has tracked online deepfake videos since 2018, has found that between 90 percent and 95 percent of deepfakes are NCII. Of those pornographic images, about 90 percent target women, and many target minors.
The victims of NCII deepfakes suffer extreme and long-lasting harm. Victims are often forced to remove themselves from the online world or even change their names to avoid harassment and discrimination.
Sadly, there are few legal remedies. Currently, 46 states have some ban on revenge porn, but only Virginia’s and California’s NCII laws include faked and deepfaked media. That leaves the many victims of AI-generated NCII to fall through the cracks.
Both the DEFIANCE Act and the TAKE IT DOWN Act provide a long-overdue legal framework to protect victims and hold accountable those who produce and distribute non-consensual sexually explicit digital forgeries.
The DEFIANCE Act, which has already passed the Senate, grants victims the right to sue their perpetrators, offering survivors a pathway to reclaim their agency, seek justice, and deter future offenders. The TAKE IT DOWN Act criminalizes the publication of non-consensual, sexually exploitative images — including AI-generated deepfakes — and requires online platforms to have in place notice and takedown processes.
Minors Are Victims
Our organizations are particularly concerned about the impact of AI-generated exploitation on children. Technology is increasingly being used to produce NCII of minors, including images of real children and known victims of abuse.
AI-generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM) is often indistinguishable from authentic images, perpetuating the cycle of exploitation and normalizing abuse. These images can also complicate victim identification for law enforcement.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which runs a database used to flag and block child-sex material, reports a sharp uptick of reports of AI-generated images within the past few months, as well as reports of people uploading images of child sexual abuse into the AI tools for the purpose of generating additional CSAM.
Bipartisan Solutions
The DEFIANCE Act is a critical tool for addressing the alarming spread of AI-generated NCII. By empowering survivors—including minors and their families—to take legal action, the legislation establishes accountability for those who knowingly engage in these heinous acts. The bill also helps establish a public norm that such acts are not victimless before they become even more widespread.
The TAKE IT DOWN Act ensures that victims will not forever be subject to the spread of NCII across internet platforms. By requiring online platforms to respond to victims and remove illegal content, this legislation creates a path for erasing NCII from the Internet.
Bipartisan support for the TAKE IT DOWN ACT and the Senate’s passage of the DEFIANCE Act underscore growing consensus around addressing this urgent issue. Lawmaker support for this legislation reflects the shared understanding that protecting victims of AI-generated abuse is not a partisan matter but a moral imperative.
With just weeks remaining in the 118th Congress, swift action is critical. Congress has an opportunity to address this urgent issue now by passing both the TAKE IT DOWN Act and the DEFIANCE Act.
Looking back on Congress’s inaction on social media, many lawmakers and the public at large regret policymakers’ delay in addressing the harms of emerging technology before it impacted our youngest generation. As AI tools, including deepfake tools, grow in use, the clock is ticking for our elected leaders to protect our children from this emerging technology’s worst harms. We urge you to confront the issue of AI-generated NCII by passing legislation now.
Sincerely,
[YOUR NAME]
Concerned American Citizen