DURBIN FILES NDAA AMENDMENT BASED ON BIPARTISAN DEFIANCE ACT

DURBIN FILES NDAA AMENDMENT BASED ON BIPARTISAN DEFIANCE ACT

The amendment would hold individuals accountable who proliferate nonconsensual, sexually-explicit "deepfake" images and videos

WASHINGTON - U.S. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2026 to hold individuals accountable who proliferate nonconsensual, sexually-explicit "deepfake" images and videos. The amendment would create a federal civil cause of action for victims to sue individuals who produce, distribute, possess, or solicit these digital forgeries without consent. The amendment is based on Durbin's bipartisan DEFIANCE Act, which unanimously passed the Senate last July.

"No one should have their privacy and autonomy violated by someone else generating explicit AI-generated content," said Durbin. "While the imagery may be fake, the harm to victims, who are often women and girls, is very real. I'm introducing an amendment to the NDAA to give power back to survivors and to crack down on the production, distribution, and possession of explicit 'deepfake' images."

A copy of Amendment #2992 is available here.

The volume of "deepfake" content available online is increasing exponentially as the technology used to create it has become more accessible to the public. The overwhelming majority of this material is sexually-explicit and is produced without the consent of the person depicted. A 2019 study found that 96 percent of "deepfake" videos were nonconsensual pornography.

One researcher found that:

• The number of nonconsensual pornographic "deepfake" videos available online has increased ninefold since 2019;

• Such videos have been viewed almost four billion times;

• Monthly traffic to the top 20 "deepfake" sites increased by 285 percent from July 2020 to July 2023; and

• Search engines directed 25.2 million visits to the top five most popular "deepfake" sites in July 2023 alone.

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