The Senate passed a bill cracking down on sexually explicit deepfakes

The Senate unanimously passed a bill on Tuesday letting victims of non-consensual intimate images created by AI — oregon “deepfakes” — writer their creators for damages.

The Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits Act (DEFIANCE) Act lets victims of sexually explicit deepfakes prosecute civilian remedies against those that produced oregon processed the representation with the intent to administer it. Victims who are identifiable successful these kinds of deepfakes tin person up to $150,000 successful damages nether the bill, and up to $250,000 if the incidental was connected to “actual oregon attempted intersexual assault, stalking, oregon harassment” oregon “the nonstop and proximate cause” of those harms. It’s present up to the House to instrumentality up the measure earlier it tin beryllium moved to the president’s table to beryllium signed into law.

In a code connected the Senate floor, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said that sexually explicit deepfakes aren’t “just immoderate fringe contented that happens to lone a fewer radical — it’s a wide problem. These types of malicious and hurtful pictures tin destruct lives.”

Schumer said the DEFIANCE Act is conscionable “one of the examples of the AI guardrails I often speech about. AI is simply a singular exertion that tin spur unthinkable innovation, but we indispensable walk guardrails to forestall its worst abuses from causing radical sedate harm.” He rolled retired a roadmap for however Senate committees should attack AI legislation earlier this year.

He urged the House to instrumentality up the DEFIANCE Act. There’s already a companion measure successful the chamber, though there’s lone a week and a fractional near earlier Congress disperses for the August recess.

“By passing this bill, we are telling victims of explicit nonconsensual deepfakes that we perceive them and we are taking action,” Schumer said.