Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez has been affected by AI deepfake images for years, and she is ready to fight against non-consensual, sexually explicit, AI-generated images. Ocasio-Cortez is an American politician of the Democratic Party and has been a member of the United States House of Representatives for New York’s 14th congressional district since January 2019.
Ocasio-Cortez told Rolling Stone that she and a bipartisan group of lawmakers will introduce the Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits (DEFIANCE) Act of 2024 in the House of Representatives. The bill is her first step since her appointment to the House bipartisan task force on AI, announced last month.
The bill amends the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) to allow people to sue those who produce, distribute, or receive fake pornography if they knew or recklessly disregarded that the victim did not consent to those images has.
“How we answer these questions will shape the way we all live as a society and individually the things that happen to us or someone we know for decades,” Ocasio-Cortez tells Rolling Stone. She says there is an “urgency of the moment because people have waited too long to lay the groundwork for this” so we need to grapple with it and find answers about how to regulate deepfake technology in a way that the victims are protected. But there is also a need to think deeply and to take very seriously the conclusions and actions we come to.
“How we answer these questions will shape all of our lives as a society.”
Ocasio-Cortez says it was crucial for her and her team to work closely with abuse survivors when working on the bill. “It’s just a different type of legislation where you really focus on the people who are most affected by it,” she says.
More than 25 organizations have supported the bipartisan legislation, including the National Women’s Law Center, the Sexual Violence Prevention Association, the National Domestic Violence Hotline and UltraViolet.
Ocasio-Cortez is co-leading the bill with Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). The Senate introduced the DEFIANCE Act on Jan. 30, about a week after several artificial intelligence-generated, sexually explicit deepfakes of Taylor Swift went viral on X.
The bill defines “digital forgeries” as visual representations “created through the use of software, machine learning, artificial intelligence, or other computer-generated or technological means to falsely appear to be authentic.” Any digital fakes that show victims “nude or in sexually explicit acts or sexual scenarios” would be considered as such. Victims could sue “persons who manufactured or possessed the counterfeit with the intent to distribute it, or who manufactured, distributed, or received the counterfeit” if they knew the victim did not consent.
The rise of generative AI is making it easier than ever for the public to create realistic images. A 2019 study by cybersecurity firm DeepTrace Labs, which develops tools to detect deepfakes, found that 96 percent of deepfake videos are non-consensual pornographic videos featuring only women. As UN Women reports, women who face multiple forms of discrimination, including Black and Indigenous women and other women of color, LGBTQ people and women with disabilities, are at increased risk of experiencing technology-enabled gender-based violence.
If the bill passes the House and Senate, it would be the first federal law protecting victims of deepfakes to provide them with civil recourse.
That’s not to say that there haven’t been previous efforts to curb deepfakes, even if previous bills aimed at doing so have not yet been implemented. Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) introduced a DeepFakes Accountability Act in June 2019 and again in September 2023 to establish criminal penalties and provide legal remedies for victims of deepfakes. In May 2023, Rep. Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.) introduced the Preventing Deepfakes of Intimate Images Act, which would have criminalized the sharing of non-consensual and sexually explicit deepfakes.
“We were working on this legislation before I even knew I would be appointed to the bipartisan AI task force,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “It’s a really big deal.”