The Senate has unanimously passed the Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits (DEFIANCE) Act, designed to provide legal recourse for victims of AI-generated deepfake pornography.

The bipartisan bill, spearheaded by Senators Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), alongside Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) in the House, now heads to the House of Representatives for approval.

To be clear, a deepfake is not the same as regular Ai porn. A deep fake is an image or video that has been altered and manipulated to misrepresent someone as doing or saying something that was not actually done or said.  The material frequently merges a victim’s face with a body in a pornographic video. Generative artificial intelligence models can also create audio, videos and images that are entirely fake but look and sound realistic. They “fake” the image (or video), to make someone is doing something that they didn’t do, such as having sex with someone that they’ve never even met.

This is something that, as a whole, the adult industry has been against, as those who appear in a deepfake haven’t consented. Consent is always key.

The DEFIANCE Act aims to amend the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) to enable victims to sue individuals who produce, distribute, or possess non-consensual deepfake pornography, provided they “knew or recklessly disregarded” the lack of consent. This legislative effort addresses a significant gap in current laws, which do not adequately cover the technological advancements in creating explicit, digitally manipulated images.

“Current laws don’t apply to deepfakes, leaving women and girls who suffer from this image-based sexual abuse without a legal remedy,” Senator Durbin stated on X following the bill’s passage. “It’s time to give victims their day in court and the tools they need to fight back. I urge my House colleagues to pass this bill expediently.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) commended the bill’s passage and praised Senator Durbin’s efforts.

After a high-profile incident involving sexually suggestive AI-generated images of singer Taylor Swift went viral on X (formerly known as Twitter), multiple representatives introduced state and federal legislation to address the issue. Senator Durbin has been particularly vocal, sending a letter to Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, in June, requesting details on how the search engine plans to tackle the proliferation of deepfakes in its search results.

“This isn’t just some fringe issue that happens to only a few people — it’s a widespread problem,” Schumer emphasized. “These types of malicious and hurtful pictures can destroy lives. Nobody is immune, not even celebrities like Taylor Swift or Megan Thee Stallion. It’s a grotesque practice, and victims of these deepfakes deserve justice.”

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has personal experience with the trauma of non-consensual deepfakes, underscored the importance of the legislation.

“There’s a shock to seeing images of yourself that someone could think are real,” she told Rolling Stone in March. “And once you’ve seen it, you’ve seen it. It parallels the same exact intention of physical rape and sexual assault, [which] is about power, domination, and humiliation. Deepfakes are absolutely a way of digitizing violent humiliation against other people.”

The Senate initially introduced the DEFIANCE Act on January 30, shortly after several AI-generated, sexually explicit deepfakes of Taylor Swift went viral on X. The bill faced an initial block in June by Representative Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.). The revised version includes a “findings” section, refining the definition of “digital forgery” and updating the available damages to ensure victims receive appropriate compensation.

The “findings” section highlights key issues: the ease of generating digital forgeries with AI, the potential mental health impacts on victims, and the inadequacy of labels depicting the images as fake. “I had no idea if the person who did it was near me location-wise, [or] if they were going to do anything else to me,” one survivor told Rolling Stone. “I had no idea if anyone who saw that video was going to try to find me. I was very physically vulnerable at that point.”

If the DEFIANCE Act passes the House, it will become the first federal law to create a civil cause of action for deepfakes, allowing both adults and minors to sue. While existing federal statutes provide for criminal prosecution of deepfakes involving minors, the DEFIANCE Act focuses on civil legal recourse for all victims.

Past legislative efforts by Representatives Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) and Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.) to address deepfakes were unsuccessful. Those bills involved criminal penalties, while DEFIANCE emphasized civil remedies.

“It’s so important to me that people understand that this is not just a form of interpersonal violence, it’s not just about the harm that’s done to the victim,” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez previously told Rolling Stone. “Because this technology threatens to do it at scale — this is about class subjugation. It’s a subjugation of entire people. And then when you do intersect that with abortion, when you do intersect that with debates over bodily autonomy, when you are able to actively subjugate all women in society on a scale of millions, at once digitally, it’s a direct connection [with] taking their rights away.”

“Over 90% of all deepfake videos made are nonconsensual sexually explicit images, and women are the targets nine times out of 10,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a statement after the Senate passed the bill on Thursday. She has previously spoken out about being targeted by such deepfakes herself.

Again, not all deepfakes are porn.

Just recently, a manipulated video of Kamala Harris delivering a speech that never actually happened made the rounds again on TikTok, racking up millions of views despite being debunked multiple times over the last year.

The video seemingly shows Kamala Harris rambling during a speech by saying, “Today is today, and yesterday is today.” It was digitally created but has been shared online as if authentic.

As the DEFIANCE Act moves to the House, its supporters remain hopeful that this critical legislation will soon provide much-needed justice for victims of non-consensual deepfake pornography.