How AI deepfakes have skirted revenge porn laws
The Tech Xplore article “How AI deepfakes have skirted revenge porn laws” discusses how advances in generative artificial intelligence are creating legal challenges for existing “revenge porn” legislation. In the U.S., all 50 states have now banned non-consensual sharing of intimate images taken from real sources, but AI-generated deepfakes — realistic explicit images of people created by AI rather than captured from real life — don’t fit neatly under current laws, leaving uncertainty about who is liable and how to regulate the technology.
Countries differ in their responses: the U.K. has threatened to ban platforms like X and AI tools such as Grok for allowing explicit deepfake generation, while the European Union, China, India, and South Korea have stricter regulation that can hold AI models responsible for misuse. A U.S. Senate bill aims to give deepfake victims the right to sue, but broader legal frameworks are still in flux.
A legal expert interviewed in the piece explains the core difficulty: traditional laws against deception and non-consensual sharing were designed for real photos and distribution, not for the generation tools themselves. This creates a “legal mess” in defining whether liability lies with the person using the AI, the tool maker, or the platform hosting the content.
