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Lawmakers pursue legislation that would make it illegal to share digitally altered images known as deepfake porn
Last year, there were more than 21,000 deepfake pornographic videos online — up more than 460% over the year prior. But Congress could soon make it illegal to share the doctored images.
Leading the charge are New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan, a Democrat, and Texas Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican, who co-authored bipartisan legislation aimed at cracking down on people who share non-consensual intimate deepfake images online. The legislation proposes criminal penalties that include a fine and up to two years in prison, and civil penalties could range up to $150,000.
“It’s outrageous,” Hassan said. “And we need to make sure that our laws keep up with this new technology and that we protect individuals.”
Breeze Liu said she was shocked when a friend discovered her face superimposed on pornographic images.
“And I really feel like my whole world fell apart at that moment,” said Liu. “You have to look at how many views are there, and how many people have violated you. I just didn’t want to live anymore, because the shame was too, too much for me to bear.”
Liu, who said she knew who the perpetrator was, decided to take her case to police.
“The police did not really do anything about it,” said Liu. “The police actually called me a prostitute. They slut shamed me.”
Liu said when law enforcement didn’t pursue the issue, the perpetrator created more deepfakes of her, creating more than 800 links across the internet. Liu said the FBI is now investigating her case and she’s also part of a class-action lawsuit against Pornhub.
Pornhub told CBS News it swiftly removes any non-consensual material on its platform, including deepfakes. The site also said it has protocols in place to prevent non-consensual material from being uploaded.
People have also created artificially generated intimate images of celebrities like Taylor Swift. In January, the social media site X disabled searches related to the singer in an effort to remove and stop the circulation of deepfake pornographic images of the pop superstar.
Teens across the country are also grappling with the increasingly common problem. Some students are creating deepfake porn of fellow students and spreading them among their friends and family members, sometimes even extorting them. In New Jersey earlier this year, a teen sued another student, accusing them of creating and sharing AI-generated pornographic images of them and others.
Hassan said Congress is working toward criminalizing the creation of non-consensual intimate images.
“There is work going on in Congress right now about how to set up this kind of guardrail, but what we know is that most people don’t know about the deepfake that exists until somebody tries to distribute it, right? So we wanted to really attack this problem at the point where it becomes obvious and somebody is likely to take action,” Hassan said.
Cornyn said that while it could take months to get the bill through the Senate, he’s confident it will pass with bipartisan support.
“We’re not going to take our foot off the gas pedal,” Cornyn said. “We’re going to continue to press this issue, because then, as long as the bill is not out, there are people taking advantage of the absence of this sort of punishment to exploit people using these deepfakes.”
In the meantime, Liu created a startup called Alecto AI to help others quickly identify and remove deepfakes they find of themselves online.
“I came to the conclusion that unless I change the system, unless I change the world, justice wouldn’t even be an option for me,” she said.
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The Chicago White Sox on Friday broke Major League Baseball’s 62-year-old single-season record with the most losses during a season with their 121st defeat against the Detroit Tigers.
The White Sox lost the game 4-1. This came after they had won three games in a row against the Los Angeles Angels and had hovered at 120 losses.
On Thursday, the Sox shut out the Angels 7-0.
The 121 losses eclipsed the total that the 1962 expansion New York Mets recorded. The White Sox had already surpassed the 2003 Detroit Tigers, a team that lost 119 games, setting the American League record. MLB only counts records set in the modern era, which began in 1900, so the 1899 Cleveland Spiders’ all-time record of 134 losses is not included.
The incredible feat of futility was the culmination of a long, grueling season in which the White Sox recorded multiple double-digit losing streaks, including a 14-game skid from May 22 to June 6, and then an American League-record 21-game losing streak between July 10 and Aug. 5. All that losing led to the firing of manager Pedro Grifol during just his second season at the helm. In less than two seasons, Grifol led the team to more than twice as many losses as he did wins.
Grady Sizemore took over as interim manager for the rest of the season.
The White Sox then recorded another 12-game losing streak that lasted from Aug. 23 through Sept. 3.
Jeff Chiu / AP
It’s been a season unlike anything fans of the franchise, which will mark the 20th anniversary of its last World Series win next year, have ever seen. The team’s winning percentage through Sunday of .231 is still significantly behind the next-worst season in franchise history, the 1932 White Sox that went 49-102-1 and posted a winning percentage of .325.
Until this season, the White Sox team with the most single-season losses in franchise history was the 1970 team, which went 56-106. This year’s team is just the sixth in franchise history to record 100 or more losses in a season, according to Baseball Reference, which has team statistics going back to 1901, the year the American League formally organized.
“I feel your pain”
The White Sox record has been so bad that even the team’s official X (formerly Twitter) account has been having some fun with the piling up of losses lately.
On Sept. 18, after a loss to the Angels, the team’s post for its final score read, “FINAL: the other team scored more runs than us.”
Last Saturday, the team posted, “FINAL: can be found on the MLB app,” after a loss to the Padres.
Then on Sunday, the team’s account posted a version of a widely used GIF of a car attempting to quickly drive onto an exit ramp, representing the team’s social media administrator, turning away from posting the final score and instead opting for “literally anything else.”
The Sox kept it up on social media after the Friday night loss.
A post read:
Things we’d rather do than read comments:
- Get a root canal
- File taxes
- Eat 5,000 saltine crackers without water
- The cinnamon challenge
- Put ketchup on a hot dog
- Bear crawl across the Sahara Desert
- Walk barefoot on an L train
The post also showed a separate window on a computer desktop screenshot showing a dejected Southpaw White Sox mascot, with the text, “slams laptop shut til tomorrow.”
The situation even prompted famed horror writer and Boston Red Sox fan Stephen King to weigh in on social media.
“Chicago White Sox fans, I feel your pain,” King posted on X. “As a fan of those other Sox, I tried to switch my loyalty to Cleveland during one particularly awful season (Butch Hobson, I’m talking about you). I couldn’t do it. Things will get better. They CAN’T get worse.”
Mark J. Terrill / AP
Despite the jokes on social media, White Sox team leadership has faced questions about what went wrong and how the team has been withstanding the historically difficult season.
General Manager Chris Getz summed up the feelings of the organization last month when he spoke to members of the news media after Grifol’s dismissal.
“There was lack of production overall,” Getz said. “I mean you look at how many games that we’ve led early and weren’t able to finish or how many games we haven’t been able to come back to get a win. Obviously, there was something that was broken. We know the flaws in this roster, but with that being said, we expected to win more games. We did.”
After last Sunday’s loss to the San Diego Padres, the team’s 120th of the season to tie the major league record, Sizemore, in true manager fashion, attempted to downplay the importance of the historic mark for the club.
“No loss is good,” Sizemore said. “Like I said, it’s not something we’re focused on. I think probably everyone outside of this clubhouse will be more obsessed with it than us.”