Senate Passes Bill Allowing Victims To Sue Over Deepfake Porn Videos

Authored by Jackson Richman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

WASHINGTON—The Senate unanimously passed a bill on Jan. 13 allowing victims to sue producers and distributors of deepfake porn videos.

The Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits Act, or DEFIANCE Act, now goes to the House, where its fate is uncertain.

It was introduced by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and was in response to X allowing nonconsensual illicit deepfakes.

“Imagine losing control over your own likeness and identity. Imagine how powerless victims feel when they cannot remove illicit content, cannot prevent it from being reproduced repeatedly, and cannot prevent new images from being created. The consequences can be profound,” Durbin said on the Senate floor.

Durbin went on to say what those consequences look like.

“Victims may endure threats to their employment, education, or reputation, or suffer additional criminal activity, such as extortion and stalking,” he said. “Many experience depression, anxiety, and fear being in public. And in the worst cases, victims have been driven to suicide.”

The legislation has the support of more than a dozen groups, including the National Women’s Law Center, National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE), Raven, Public Citizen, and the Sexual Violence Prevention Association.

Durbin’s office cited that since 2019, the number of nonconsensual pornographic deepfake videos available online has increased ninefold. These videos have been viewed almost 4 billion times.

The Senate passed Durbin’s bill in 2024, but the House did not vote on it.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) introduced a companion bill in the House.

“Victims of nonconsensual pornographic deepfakes have waited too long for federal legislation to hold perpetrators accountable. As deepfakes become easier to access and create—96 percent of deepfake videos circulating online are nonconsensual pornography—Congress needs to act to show victims that they won’t be left behind,” she said in a statement. “The DEFIANCE Act will allow victims to finally defend their reputations and take civil action against individuals who produced, distributed, or received digital forgeries.”

President Donald Trump signed a similar bill in May 2025 that seeks to reduce the spread of nonconsensual intimate imagery and artificial intelligence (AI)-generated deepfakes.

“With the rise of AI image generation, women have been harassed with deepfakes and other explicit images distributed against their will,” the president said during the event where he signed the bill, called the Take It Down Act. “It’s just so horribly wrong, and it’s a very abusive situation … and today we’re making it totally illegal.”

The Take It Down Act requires online platforms to remove nonconsensual intimate deepfake videos. Violators are subject to a maximum of three years in prison.