AOC Teams Up With “Fierce” Paris Hilton to Tackle Deepfake Porn
The Hollywood Reporter story covers how celebrity Paris Hilton teamed up with U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to urge passage of new legislation aimed at combating AI-generated deepfake pornography. At a press event on Capitol Hill, Hilton and Ocasio-Cortez highlighted the growing crisis of AI-created sexually explicit images made without consent, which they say cause real harm and humiliation to victims and target women and girls nationwide. Hilton drew on her own experience of having an intimate video shared without her permission early in her career to argue that existing laws don’t adequately protect people from modern AI-enabled abuse.
They are backing the DEFIANCE Act (Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits Act), a bill that would create a civil right of action allowing victims of non-consensual deepfake porn to sue those who created or distributed the images. The legislation passed the Senate unanimously and now faces action in the U.S. House of Representatives. Hilton said technological creation of non-consensual deepfakes has become “an epidemic,” with hundreds of thousands of such images circulating online; Ocasio-Cortez noted the psychological trauma and real-world impacts victims suffer, and framed the bill as necessary to ensure accountability for abusers and justice for survivors.
