House Overwhelmingly Passes ‘Take It Down’ Act Aimed at AI Deepfakes

Last June, Congress introduced the Take It Down Act, a bill aimed at holding social media and apps accountable for AI-generated deepfake porn images on their platforms. The House overwhelmingly passed the Take It Down Act last night, April 28, sending it next to President Trump’s desk, who is expected to sign the bill into law promptly.

The Take It Down Act passed with heavy bipartisan support in the House by a vote of 409 to 2 after passing a Senate vote in February. The Take It Down Act criminalizes sharing “revenge porn,” including sexually explicit AI-generated photos and videos of third parties, on internet platforms. The bill also requires social media companies and online platforms to remove the content within two days of notification that the content is living on their platforms.

In a contentious political environment, the Take It Down Act has had surprising support from both sides of the aisle. It has also received support from social media and tech companies themselves, which is notable given that these companies typically push back against increased regulation of their platforms.

The bill says violators are “subject to mandatory restitution and criminal penalties, including prison, a fine, or both.” Further, threats to publish affected materials are “similarly prohibited.” Specifically, for offenses involving adults, a person will be fined until Title 18, United States Code, and imprisoned for “not more than two years.” In cases involving minors, the prison time limit increases to three years.

The bill also states that “covered platforms,” must react to remove offending content within 48 hours. A covered platform is a “website, online service, online application, or mobile application” that “serves the public” with primarily user-generated content. The Take It Down Act does not cover Internet service providers and email platforms.

Despite overwhelming political support, the Take It Down Act is not without detractors. President Trump has expressed interest in using the Take It Down Act to silence his critics, although it is unclear how he could do so.

“And once [the act] passes the House, I look forward to signing that bill into law. Thank you. And I’m going to use that bill for myself too, if you don’t mind, because nobody gets treated worse than I do online. Nobody,” Trump told Congress in a joint address on March 4.

The Take It Down Act covers “nonconsensual intimate visual depictions,” a relatively broad definition of impacted content. This generality concerns some critics and digital rights activists.

EFF reported on March 5 that it opposed the Take It Down Act over related fears it could be “easily manipulated to take down lawful content that powerful people simply don’t like.”

President Trump is expected to sign the Take It Down Act into law as soon as today.

Image credits: Featured image licensed via Depositphotos.