Trump Signs Law Banning Deepfake Revenge Porn

President Trump signed a groundbreaking law Monday banning deepfake revenge porn and forcing social media to act quickly on victim reports.

In a step toward online safety, President Donald Trump signed the Take It Down Act into law on Monday, as first reported by Bloomberg. The new legislation makes it a crime to knowingly post AI-generated sexually explicit images, also known as deepfakes, without the person’s consent.

“With the rise of AI image generation, countless women have been harassed with deepfakes and other explicit images distributed against their will,” Trump said during the White House Rose Garden ceremony, reports Bloomberg. “It’s just so horribly wrong […] and today, we’re making it totally illegal,” he added.

Under the law, offenders can face up to three years in prison. Social media companies and websites must remove the content within 48 hours of a victim’s report and make reasonable efforts to delete all copies. Platforms that fail to comply may face civil penalties.

“This legislation is 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,” said First Lady Melania Trump, who has championed the measure as part of her youth safety efforts. “Thank you all for coming together to prioritize people over politics.”

AOL reports that the bill passed Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support, and gained backing from both Republicans and Democrats. Notable sponsors included Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), along with Reps. Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.) and Madeline Dean (D-Pa.).

Bloomberg notes however that tech leaders like Meta and Google have supported the bill, while others raised concerns about free speech.

Aljazeera reports that the Electronic Frontier Foundation warned that the law’s rules for taking down flagged content could threaten “free expression, user privacy, and due process, without addressing the problem it claims to solve.”

“Lawful content – including satire, journalism, and political speech – could be wrongly censored,” the group said in a February statement, according to Aljazeera.

AOL reports that supporters argue the law respects First Amendment rights by targeting only content that would mislead a “reasonable person.”