The technology that enables creating faked sexual images of real people is so new that federal legislation outlawing it is lagging, a situation that a bipartisan bill introduced this week hopes to change, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.
Rep. Joseph Morelle, D-N.Y., has proposed legislation that would outlaw the nonconsensual sharing of digitally-altered intimate images, with Rep. Tom Kean, R-N.J., as a co-sponsor. Kean had introduced a bill in November that would require AI-generated content to have clear labeling that identifies it as such.
While people have long been able to doctor images with Photoshop and similar software, new AI technology makes it easy to create entirely fabricated photos, and any image can then be shared widely on social and messaging platforms with a few taps.
In addition to making the sharing of digitally altered intimate images a criminal offense, the proposed legislation by Morelle and Kean would also permit victims to sue offenders in civil court, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The two congressmen came together to push for the initiative after an incident at a New Jersey high school in which boys shared AI-generated nude images of female classmates without their consent. When the girls discovered what was happening, they reported it to school administrators.
"What happened to me and my classmates was not cool, and there's no way I'm just going to shrug and let it slide," said Francesca Mani, a 14-year-old student who was told by the school that her photo had been included in some of the generated images and was in Washington, D.C. when Morelle and Kean announced the legislation. "I'm here, standing up and shouting for change, fighting for laws so no one else has to feel as lost and powerless as I did."
Morelle added in the joint statement with Mani that "let's not wait for the next mass incident to make the news. This is happening every day to women everywhere, and it's time to give them back their power."
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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