Trump Signs ‘Take It Down Act,’ Criminalizing Deepfake and Revenge Porn

On Monday, President Donald Trump signed the “Take It Down Act” into regulation, striking the United States a few of the first international locations to impose felony consequences on creators of non-consensual deepfake and revenge porn content material. The invoice, handed by way of a extensive bipartisan majority in Congress, goals the emerging risk of AI-generated specific imagery and movies, particularly the ones shared on-line with out the topic’s consent.

The regulation used to be the First Lady’s marquee venture inside of a rebooted Be Best marketing campaign. She advised the group that kid and circle of relatives well-being rely on curtailing virtual abuse, a declare she sponsored by way of noting the velocity and realism with which generative AI can fabricate sexual content material.

Senators Cruz and Klobuchar co-sponsored the invoice after months of hearings that featured sufferers describing how manipulated pictures traveled sooner than takedown notices may just stay tempo. Two dissenting House participants—each mentioning free-speech worries—turned into footnotes as soon as the chamber handed the invoice 409-2 in April, following a unanimous Senate vote in February.

Now that the measure is regulation, any individual who knowingly posts non-consensual intimate imagery faces federal fees that may come with jail time. The statute additionally compels social-media websites to delete flagged pictures “expeditiously,” and it arms the Federal Trade Commission authority to superb firms that sit down on proceedings.

Cruz referred to as the instant “an historic win for victims,” stressing that tech corporations “will no longer be allowed to turn a blind eye.” Klobuchar pointed to bipartisan cohesion, framing the act as evidence that Congress can nonetheless transfer on privateness when folks power lawmakers immediately.

Digital rights teams applauded the brand new felony consequences but warned that the takedown mandate may just kick back reliable speech if platforms over-filter. They additionally wondered whether or not the FTC has sources to police 1000’s of day by day elimination requests as soon as the regulation takes impact in six months.

Victim-advocacy organizations, together with the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, praised the measure’s slim center of attention on non-consensual sexual subject matter, contrasting it with broader content-moderation expenses that experience stalled over First Amendment considerations. Several teams stated they’re going to track courtroom instances to make certain prosecutors use the statute relatively than lesser state-level fees.

Tech coverage analysts see the act as an extraordinary tech regulation to transparent a deeply fractured Congress. They be aware its restricted scope—deepfakes and revenge porn—sidestepped higher debates over Section 230, information privateness, or AI legal responsibility that proceed to bottle up broader reforms.

The Justice Department now should draft steering that tells U.S. legal professionals the right way to maintain proof from in another country servers, whilst the FTC prepares rule-making on response-time benchmarks for takedown requests. Civil liberties legal professionals will watch the ones regulations for indicators that the road between unlawful exploitation and constitutionally secure satire remains intact.