President Donald Trump has signed legislation criminalizing “revenge porn” at the federal level, including artificially generated images.
The Take It Down Act, which received nearly unanimous congressional support, makes publishing intimate images without consent a federal crime and requires social media platforms to remove such content within 48 hours when victims request removal. The law covers both authentic photos and AI-created “deepfakes.”
“With the rise of AI image generation, countless women have been harassed with deepfakes and other explicit images distributed against their will. This is โฆ wrong โฆ just so horribly wrong,” Trump stated during the White House signing ceremony. “It’s a very abusive situation โฆ And today we’re making it totally illegal.”
First Lady Melania Trump, who advocated for the legislation following her husband’s return to office, described it as a “powerful step forward in our efforts to ensure that every American, especially young people, can feel better protected from their image or identity being abused.”
The bill garnered widespread bipartisan support and endorsements from organizations fighting sexual harassment and assault. However, it faced opposition from digital rights advocates concerned about privacy and free speech implications.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation criticized the law’s content removal provisions, arguing they threatened “free expression, user privacy, and due process, without addressing the problem it claims to solve.”
“Lawful content โ including satire, journalism, and political speech โ could be wrongly censored,” the group stated in February. “The legislation’s tight time frame requires that apps and websites remove content within 48 hours, meaning that online service providers, particularly smaller ones, will have to comply so quickly to avoid legal risk that they won’t be able to verify claims. Instead, automated filters will be used to catch duplicates, but these systems are infamous for flagging legal content, from fair-use commentary to news reporting.”
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