Senate passes Defiance Act for a second time to address Grok deepfakes
The Senate passed the Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits (DEFIANCE) Act with unanimous consent, according to bill co-sponsor Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL). The bill allows subjects of non-consensual, sexually explicit deepfakes to bring civil action against the people who create and host them.
Deepfakes are a known problem online, but without the proper protections, easy access to AI-powered image and video generation tools has made it possible for anyone to create compromising content using another person’s image. This has become a particular problem on X, where the integration of Grok, the AI assistant created by X’s parent company xAI, allows anyone to turn the content of another person’s message into an image-generating prompt. Over the past month, this has allowed users to create sexually explicit images of children, simply by responding to a message with @grok and a request.
In response, Ofcom, the UK media regulator, has already opened an investigation into X for potential breaches of the Online Safety Act. The chatbot was also blocked outright in Malaysia and Indonesia. The DEFIANCE Act won’t stop Grok or other AI tools from generating nonconsensual deepfakes, but it would make creating or hosting this content potentially very costly for anyone facing a lawsuit.
The Senate passed an earlier version of the DEFIANCE Act in 2024, but it remained stalled in the House. Given the urgency of the Grok deepfakes issue, we hope this new version of the bill will not encounter the same resistance. Congress last year passed a regulatory text on deepfakes, the Take It Down Act, with bipartisan support. This bill focused on companies that host non-consensual and sexually explicit content, rather than the people exploited by that content.
