Senate passes Defiance Act for a second time to handle Grok deepfakes

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

Deepfakes are a identified difficulty on-line, however with out the right protections, quick access to AI-powered picture and video technology instruments has made it potential for anybody to create compromising content material utilizing one other particular person’s likeness. This has change into a particular problem on X, the place the combination of Grok, the AI assistant created by X’s parent company xAI, makes it potential for anybody to show the content material of one other particular person’s put up into an image-generating immediate. Over the past month, that is allowed customers to create sexually express photos of kids, 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, but it surely stalled within the Home. Given the urgency of Grok’s deepfake drawback, 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 yr, the Take It Down Act, with bipartisan help. That invoice was centered on the businesses who host nonconsensual, sexually express content material, reasonably than the individuals exploited by it.