By Michael Scott
The US Senate passed the DEFIANCE Act to combat digital forgeries from deepfake and improve relief for victims of non-consensual activities.
The DEFIANCe Act, sponsored by Senator Richard Durbin from Illinois, provides a leeway for the victims to take action against the digital forgeries that use their likeness to proliferate sexual content.
The US Senate voted in favor of the anti-deepfake law, whose provisions seek to safeguard individuals from the non-consensual utilization of their likeness in pornographic content.
The Senate voted to pass the Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits (DEFIANCE) Act. The law now has bipartisan support in the House of Representatives and awaits a review before being submitted for President Joe Biden’s assent to become law.
Liquidated Damages for Deepfake Violation
The Act empowers victims to initiate actions against digital forgeries executed via software, machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI), or computer-generated means. It applies where such images are falsely portrayed as authentic sexualized images for ten years—now double the requirements under the standard of statute limitations.
The new law supports the course for identifiable individuals to recover damages, among them liquidated to a cap of $250,000. Also, the new law allows recovery of actual damages and litigation costs.
The law enables courts to grant punitive and equitable relief to victims, such as injunctions. Besides, the provisions offer privacy protections for plaintiffs who utilize pseudonyms and privacy while disclosing sensitive information in court.
The new law provides for action targeting the creator of digital forgery and the parties involved in distributing and possessing such material. Nonetheless, experts are dissatisfied with the bill as its provisions only cover the iceberg tip in resolving the potential damage from deepfakes.
Gartner vice president Svetlana Sicular considers that though the DEFIANCE Act provisions only apply to tame sexualized images, they should constitute the start to criminalized forgery behavior.
Sicular observed that the law focuses on porn images and is great in scope to defend individuals. Society needs protection on individual and business levels, and a similar scope is extended to the political and geopolitical levels.
Political Deepfakes to Influence Democratic Elections
Sicular noted that the law is timely, particularly with political deepfakes likely to influence the outcome of democratic elections. Also, actors behind the deepfakes could undermine businesses and likely impersonate to aid resource embezzling, fight competitions, and damage reputations.
The deepfakes have been the preferred tool for state actors such as Russia to attain advances in hybrid warfare. Such applies when deploying a blend of kinetic, cyber, and disinformation attacks, said Sicular.
Sicular observes the need for the law to have an expanded scope, particularly as the world welcomes an era where legal protection is vital to safeguard against AI harms.
Gartner’s research illustrates that 62% of chief and senior executives consider deepfakes a threat. They consider them to add operation costs and complexities that organizations must confront by 2027. Another 5% consider deep fakes an existential threat.
The abuse of deepfakes became a reality when cybercriminals leveraged AI deepfakes to falsely portray the Arup chief finance executive. The actors convinced staff to initiate a $25 million transfer from the engineering firm’s bank account.
Deepfale Prevalence in AI Election
In a recent report, Politico dubbed the present era an AI election, citing the prevalence of deepfakes, thereby propagating distrust and disinformation. Such plays out as the Republican and Democrat parties wage an information war regarding attendance at their campaign events.
The DEFIANCE Act is a critical milestone for the US as it awaits several bills to resolve deepfakes holistically. Such bills include H. R. 5586, which addresses deepfake technology utilization in producing advanced technological impersonation records containing moving visual elements. The bill is yet to realize progress since its introduction in September last year.
The DEFIANCE Act is timely as tech companies, led by Google, ramp up efforts to address AI deepfakes within the search results. The tech giant announced efforts to demote websites that reportedly contain illicit images.