Senate Fights AI-Generated Deepfakes In New Bill
The US Senate has unanimously passed the Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits (DEFIANCE) Act, a bipartisan bill aimed at providing legal recourse to victims of AI-generated pornographic deepfakes.
This landmark legislation, championed by legislators from both parties, seeks to address the growing issue of non-consensual, sexually explicit images created using artificial intelligence technology.
Key highlights:
• The bill amends the Violence Against Women Act to allow victims to sue producers, distributors, and receivers of deepfake pornography.
• It's the first federal legislation to create a civil cause of action for deepfakes, applicable to both adults and minors.
• The bill includes a "findings" section that outlines the ease of creating digital forgeries and the potential psychological impacts on victims.
• A focus on how high-profile incidents, such as the viral spread of Taylor Swift deepfakes, have highlighted the urgency of addressing this issue.
• The legislation has received support from both Democratic and Republican lawmakers.
As this technology becomes more widespread and with incidents already occurring at middle and high schools, educational institutions have a crucial role to play in addressing the issue of AI-generated deepfakes.
By educating students about these issues, schools can help prevent harmful deepfakes, while also preparing students to navigate an increasingly complex digital landscape.
As part of AI for Education's work supporting the responsible adoption of GenAI, we’ve created a free classroom guide on Uncovering Deepfakes that we hope can lead to these necessary discussions in classrooms and staff rooms.
The resource features:
- Information on what Deepfakes are and their impact on society
- Strategies for critical and responsible consumption of online content and the identification of deepfakes
- Key examples of audio, photo, and video deepfakes to spur discussion
- Guiding questions for classroom discussion on the ethics of deepfakes
Links to our guide and the full DEFIANCE Act.
