AOC eyes House path as Senate clears deepfake bill
Plus: Inflation remained flat to close 2025, Pressley and Markey push to end qualified immunity and the DNC launches a new voter registration push.
First Things First
The Senate on Tuesday cleared by unanimous consent the DEFIANCE Act, a bill lawmakers in both parties say would help confront the spread of nonconsensual, sexually explicit AI-generated deepfakes.
The legislation now goes to the House, where Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) will harness her influence to shepherd it to President Donald Trump’s desk to be signed into law.
“I am deeply encouraged that we’ve been able to build bipartisan consensus around trying to protect all sorts of people, especially children and victims of sexual assault,” Ocasio-Cortez told me this afternoon. “This is a very important step, I think, from a bipartisan perspective.”
The Bronx-area Democrat said her next step is to speak with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) about the path forward.
Specifically, the bill—led in the Senate by Dick Durbin of Illinois, the number-two Democrat and highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.)—gives victims the right to bring civil lawsuits against people who knowingly create, distribute, or traffic in explicit digital forgeries made without consent.
In floor remarks this morning, Durbin justified the measure as a response to the rapid growth of deepfake technology and the real-world harm it has caused, including reputational damage, extortion, and severe emotional distress.
His office cited research findings that the number of nonconsensual pornographic deepfake videos available online has increased ninefold since 2019 and has been viewed almost four billion times. Monthly traffic to the top 20 deepfake sites increased by 285 percent from July 2020 to July 2023. And search engines directed 25.2 million visits to the top five most popular deepfake sites in July 2023 alone.
“The consequences can be profound. Victims may endure threats to their employment, education, or reputation, or suffer additional criminal activity such as extortion and stalking,” Durbin said. “Many experience depression, anxiety, and fear being in public. And in the worst cases, victims have been driven to suicide.”
