The Senate passed a bill cracking down on sexually explicit deepfakes

The Senate unanimously passed a bill on Tuesday letting victims of nonconsensual intimate images created by AI — or “deepfakes” — sue their creators for damages.

The Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits Act (DEFIANCE) Act lets victims of sexually explicit deepfakes pursue civil remedies against those who produced or processed the image with the intent to distribute it. Victims who are identifiable in these kinds of deepfakes can receive up to $150,000 in damages under the bill and up to $250,000 if the incident was connected to “actual or attempted sexual assault, stalking, or harassment” or “the direct and proximate cause” of those harms. It’s now up to the House to take up the bill before it can be moved to the president’s desk to be signed into law.

Many people first learned about nonconsensual intimate deepfakes when sexually explicit AI-created images of Taylor Swift flooded social media earlier this year. These types of images have also become an issue in schools around the country, where high school girls have learned of intimate AI-generated pictures being passed around by peers.

In a speech on the Senate floor, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said that sexually explicit deepfakes aren’t “just some fringe issue that happens to only a few people — it’s a widespread problem. These types of malicious and hurtful pictures can destroy lives.”

Schumer said the DEFIANCE Act is just “one of the examples of the AI guardrails I often talk about. AI is a remarkable technology that can spur incredible innovation, but we must pass guardrails to prevent its worst abuses from causing people grave harm.” He rolled out a roadmap for how Senate committees should approach AI legislation earlier this year.

He urged the House to take up the DEFIANCE Act. There’s already a companion bill in the chamber, though there’s only a week and a half left before Congress disperses for the August recess.

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