(The Lion)–The U.S. Senate unanimously passed legislation last week to give victims of nonconsensual deepfake pornography a clearer path to hold creators and distributors accountable in court.
“Deepfakes” refer to inauthentic but hyper-realistic media, including images, video and audio.
The Defiance Act lets victims of sexually explicit deepfakes bring civil lawsuits against those responsible for producing or sharing the material.
The bill passed the Senate by unanimous consent after being brought forward by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, and co-sponsored by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina.
“Give to the victims their day in court to hold those responsible who continue to publish these images at their expense,” Durbin said on the Senate floor. “Today, we are one step closer to making this a reality.”
The legislation previously cleared the Senate during the last Congress but stalled in the House. Supporters say the bill addresses a growing gap in federal law as artificial intelligence (AI) tools make it easier to create realistic sexual images without consent.
The measure builds on earlier congressional action. Lawmakers passed the Take It Down Act last year, which made it a federal crime to post nonconsensual sexually explicit deepfakes. President Donald Trump signed the bill into law last May after public support from First Lady Melania Trump.
Durbin said criminal penalties alone are not enough to address the harm caused by deepfake pornography, particularly for minors and young adults whose images can circulate indefinitely online.
“With the push of a button, generative AI can swap someone’s face onto another person’s body, remove that person’s clothing so they appear nude or undress someone to show them in lingerie or other exposed positions,” Durbin said.
The Illinois Democrat also urged the House to act quickly on the Defiance Act, saying the problem continues to spread faster than existing safeguards.
“Imagine losing control of your own likeness or identity,” Durbin said. “Imagine that happening to you when you were in high school. Imagine how powerless victims feel when they cannot remove illicit content, cannot prevent it from being reproduced repeatedly and cannot prevent new images from being created. The consequences can be profound.”
The bipartisan backing reflects broad agreement that technological advances have outpaced legal protections for personal dignity and privacy.
The Senate vote comes amid renewed scrutiny of AI platforms that generate images. This month, Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok has faced backlash for producing nonconsensual sexualized images of women and children at user request on the social media platform X.
