On Tuesday, the Senate did something it rarely does: it passed legislation by unanimous consent. The DEFIANCE Act was inoffensive enough: a bill to ban nonconsensual deepfake sexually explicit images.
Moreover, the bill was introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). It’s the latest sign that the lawmaker has grown her influence in a legislative body that once dismissed her as a firebrand but in which she’s now a power broker.
The idea of banning sexually explicit deepfake images without a person’s consent gained massive steam amid the proliferation of nonconsensual images of women and even underage girls on X via Grok, its in-house AI tool.
In the United Kingdom, Sir Keir Starmer warned its owner, Elon Musk, that it would take “fast action” to deal with the nonconsensual images. Indonesia and Malaysia become the first two countries to block Grok.
And Ocasio-Cortez has some ostensible support from House Speaker Mike Johnson, who voiced some support for the bill.
“I’m certainly in favor of it,” Johnson told The Independent. “We’ve got to find the vote tally, but that should be a big bipartisan concern. We need to protect children online, and we need to stop these abuses. Is terrible. It’s horrible.”
All of this would seem encouraging if the Senate had not passed the DEFIANCE Act during the last Congress, before it died in the House of Representatives.
“I’ve spoken with Speaker Johnson. At that point, it’s just about having those conversations to ensure that the legislation moves,” Ocasio-Cortez told The Independent.
Musk remains an influential money man despite his rapid fall from grace in Trump world last year after running the Department of Government Efficiency and his venom toward President Donald Trump.
The two seem to have patched things up and Musk pledged to throw his support behind Republicans on New Year’s Day because “America is toast if the radical left wins.”
And in December, the Pentagon announced that it would add Grok to its “AI arsenal.”
Ocasio-Cortez said she was not surprised by this.
“I mean, they’re in business together,” she told The Independent.
But that doesn’t mean the legislation doesn’t have allies in the House, even from unexpected places. Rep. Nancy Mace, the anti-trans MAGA Republican candidate for governor of South Carolina, told The Independent she supports the bill.
