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

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

Deepfakes are a identified problem on-line, however with out the right protections, quick access to AI-powered picture and video era instruments has made it attainable for anybody to create compromising content material utilizing one other individual’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 attainable for anybody to show the content material of one other individual’s submit into an image-generating immediate. Over the past month, that is allowed customers to create sexually express photos of youngsters, simply by replying to a submit with @grok and a request.

In response, Ofcom, the UK’s media regulator, has already opened an investigation into X for probably violating the Online Safety Act. The chatbot has additionally been outright blocked in Malaysia and Indonesia. The DEFIANCE Act will not stop Grok or different AI instruments from producing nonconsensual deepfakes, however it will make creating or internet hosting that content material probably 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 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, slightly than the individuals exploited by it.