THE SENATE UNANIMOUSLY passed a bipartisan bill to provide recourse to victims of porn deepfakes — or sexually-explicit, non-consensual images created with artificial intelligence.
The legislation, called the Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits (DEFIANCE) Act — passed in Congress’ upper chamber on Tuesday. The legislation has been led by Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), as well as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) in the House.
The legislation would amend the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) to allow people to sue those who produce, distribute, or receive the deepfake pornography, if they “knew or recklessly disregarded” the fact that the victim did not consent to those images.
That’s a predicate for any law bound to the Commerce Clause. You need to demonstrate the regulation is being applied to interstate traffic. Anything else would be limited to state/municipal regulations.
That’s arguably a better rule than the more traditional flat-fee penalties, as it curbs the impulse to treat violations as cost-of-business. A firm that makes $1B/year isn’t going to blink at a handful of $1000 judgements.
A revenge-porn law that can be evaded by asserting “This isn’t Taylor Swift, its Tay Swiff and any resemblance of an existing celebrity is purely coincidental” would be toothless. We already apply these rules for traditional animated assets. You’d be liable for producing an animated short staring “Definitely Not Mickey Mouse” under the same reasoning.
This doesn’t prevent you from creating a unique art asset. And certainly there’s a superabundance of original pornographic art models and porn models generated with the consent of the living model. The hitch here is obvious, though. You’re presumed to own your own likeness.
My biggest complaint is that it only seems to apply to pornography. And I suspect we’ll see people challenge the application of the law by producing “parody” porn or “news commentary” porn. What the SCOTUS does with that remains to be seen.
No argument there but it reinforces my point that this law is written for Taylor swift and not a random high schooler.
Except that there are fair use exceptions specifically to prevent copyright law from running afoul of the first amendment. You can see the parody exception used in many episodes of south park for example and even specifically used to depict Mickey Mouse. Either this bill allows for those types of uses in which case it’s toothless anyway or it’s much more restrictive to speech than existing copyright law.
In a sane world, class action lawsuits would balance these scales.
Why would revenge porn constitute fair use? This seems more akin to slander.
You keep referring to this as revenge porn which to me is a case where someone spreads nudes around as a way to punish their current or former partner. You could use AI to generate material to use as revenge porn, but I bet most AI nudes are not that.
Think about a political comic showing a pro-corporate politician performing a sex act with Jeff bezos. Clearly that would be protected speech. If you generate the same image with generative AI though then suddenly it’s illegal even if you clearly label it as being a parody. That’s the concern. Moreover, the slander/libel angle doesn’t make sense if you include a warning that the image is generated, as you are not making a false statement.
To sum up why I think this bill is kinda weird and likely to be ineffective, it’s perfectly legal for me to generate and distribute a fake ai video of my neighbor shooting a puppy as long as I don’t present it as a real video. If I generate the same video but my neighbor’s dick is hanging out, straight to jail. It’s not consistent.
I would consider, as an example, a student who created a vulgar AI porn display of another student or teacher out of some sense of spite an example of “revenge porn”. Same with a coworker or boss trying to humiliate someone at the office.
That’s another good example. The Trump/Putin kissing mural is a great example of something that ends up being homophobic rather than partisan.
If you used it to slander your neighbor, it would not be legal.
So you think it should be illegal?
You’re entirely ignoring my point, I’m not trying to pass the video off as real therefore it’s not slander.
I think it’s an example of partisan language that ends up being blandly homophobic.
Why would putting up a giant sign reading “My neighbor murders dogs for fun” be a tort but a mural to the same effect be protected?