«Intimate» AI deepfakes are now illegal in the USA

It sure took a while and some harrowing experiences, but the deepfake “industry” just took a body blow last evening.

The penalties for making nonconsensual sexual deepfakes now include up to three years in prison, and websites will have 48 hours to remove reported content — and copies of it.

Bipartisan effor in Congress
The sweeping new law sets up the Federal Trade Commission to sue websites in violation, and individual persons can sue for removal and damages if they don’t follow up on takedown notices.

The bipartisan Take It Down Act easily cleared congress in April this year, and was signed with the usual fanfare in the Rose Garden by President Donald Trump yesterday afternoon.

Victims of deepfake porn previously had little recourse in the law to fight the spread of their images and likeness on the web, and a small cottage industry popped up to distribute the pics and clips.

Civil rights complaints
There are som civil rights complaints about the law, for instance those saying that the takedown provisions are overly broad and the tight timeline in the Act might lead to people getting actively monitored and fuel censorship of legal content, writes Mashable.

While Donald Trump for his part says he might use the law for himself, claiming himself as the greatest victim of it, it certainly does beg the question of enforcing the law properly and not going after things like humor and satire clips that aren’t intimate in nature.

— It’s so ambiguously drafted that I think it’ll be hard for a court to parse when it will be enforced unconstitutionally, says Becca Branum, deputy director of CDT’s Free Expression Project in a comment to The Verge

Read more: CNN has a deep report, The Verge focuses on civil rights, Politico covers the signing, and Mashable has a writeup.