Senate passes Defiance Act for a second time to deal with Grok deepfakes

The Senate has handed the Disrupt Specific Solid Photos and Non-Consensual Edits (DEFIANCE ) Act with unanimous consent, in response to the invoice’s co-sponsor Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL). The invoice lets the topics of nonconsensual, sexually specific deepfakes take civil motion in opposition to the individuals who create and host them.

Deepfakes are a recognized concern on-line, however with out the correct protections, quick access to AI-powered picture and video technology instruments has made it attainable for anybody to create compromising content material utilizing one other individual’s likeness. This has grow to be a particular problem on X, the place the combination of Grok, the AI assistant created by X’s parent company xAI, makes it attainable for anybody to show the content material of one other individual’s put up into an image-generating immediate. During the last month, that is allowed customers to create sexually specific photographs of youngsters, simply by replying to a put up with @grok and a request.

In response, Ofcom, the UK’s media regulator, has already opened an investigation into X for doubtlessly violating the Online Safety Act. The chatbot has additionally been outright blocked in Malaysia and Indonesia. The DEFIANCE Act will not forestall Grok or different AI instruments from producing nonconsensual deepfakes, however it might make creating or internet hosting that content material doubtlessly very costly for anybody on the receiving finish of a lawsuit.

The Senate handed an earlier version of the DEFIANCE Act in 2024, however it stalled within the Home. Given the urgency of Grok’s deepfake downside, the hope is that this new version of the bill will not see the identical resistance. Congress handed an earlier piece of deepfake regulation final 12 months, the Take It Down Act, with bipartisan help. That invoice was centered on the businesses who host nonconsensual, sexually specific content material, moderately than the folks exploited by it.