Tag: deepfakes

Democrats Can’t Take A Joke, So They’re Trying To Outlaw Free Speech

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., wants to make one thing perfectly clear: She has never said Sydney Sweeney has “perfect [breasts].” Nor has she accused her fellow Democrats of being “too fat to wear jeans or too ugly to go outside.”

The Minnesota leftist attempted to clear the air earlier this week in a New York Times opinion piece headlined, “Amy Klobuchar: What I Didn’t Say About Sydney Sweeney.” 

Klobuchar wrote that she is the victim of a hoax, a “realistic deepfake.” Some trickster apparently put together and pushed out an AI-generated video in which Klobuchar appears to make (hilariously) outrageous comments about Sweeney’s American Eagle jeans ad — after liberals charged that the commercial is racist and an endorsement of eugenics. 

‘Party of Ugly People’

The doctored Klobuchar appears to be speaking at a Senate committee hearing, She demands Democrats receive “representation.” Of course, the satirical video has gone viral. 

“If Republicans are going to have beautiful girls with perfect ti**ies” in their ads, we want ads for Democrats, too, you know?” the fake Klobuchar asserts in the vid. “We want ugly, fat bitches wearing pink wigs and long-ass fake nails being loud and twerking on top of a cop car at a Waffle House ‘cause they didn’t get extra ketchup.”

“Just because we’re the party of ugly people doesn’t mean we can’t be featured in ads, okay?” the AI Amy implores. “And I know most of us are too fat to wear jeans or too ugly to go outside, but we want representation.” 

She appears — and sounds — so sincere.  But Klobuchar wants you to know it certainly was not her saying such “vulgar and absurd” things. That’s why she’s urging Congress to pass laws to ban such AI videos, which would be as absurd as social justice warriors calling American Eagle white supremacists for paying a blue jeans-clad, beautiful actress to say she has great jeans. 

Any such law would certainly and rightly be challenged in court. 

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Judge Strikes Down California Deepfake Censorship Law

California’s attempt to regulate political speech on major social media platforms has been blocked in federal court, with a judge ruling the state’s latest “deepfake” law clashes with protections already established by Congress.

Assembly Bill 2655 attempted to compel certain large platforms to track down and delete “materially deceptive content” about candidates, election officials, and officeholders.

Supporters described it as a safeguard against manipulated media. The companies targeted, including X and Rumble, argued it was an attempt to turn them into agents of government censorship.

Senior US District Judge John Mendez sided with the platforms and did not even need to reach the argument of constitutional free speech questions to strike down the measure.

He found the federal Communications Decency Act [CDA] already shields online services from punishment over third-party content.

“No parts of this statute are severable because the whole statute is preempted,” Mendez said in court. “No parts of A.B. 2655 can be salvaged.”

The ruling applies to the companies in the lawsuit, and his earlier order freezing enforcement of the law remains in effect statewide until he issues a formal opinion.

For Mendez, the law punished companies for doing something they are “clearly protected by [the CDA] from doing.”

The court also cast doubt on another state law, Assembly Bill 2839, which prohibits false or misleading digital communications aimed at election workers, officials, voting equipment, or candidates in the months leading up to an election. That measure is also on hold, and Mendez signaled he doubts it will survive judicial review.

“Anybody can sue,” he said. “I can sue. If I see the video, under this law, I can sue.” He warned that such a rule chills protected speech and noted the state had not shown it was using the least speech-restrictive approach possible.

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Denmark Is Fighting AI by Giving Citizens Copyright to Their Own Faces

Your image, your voice, and your essence as a human being could be gobbled up and regurgitated by AI. The clock is ticking on when you’re control over your image and representation is completely out of your hands.

To tip the scales back in favor of those who wish to remain in firm control of their image, Denmark has put forth a proposal that would give every one of its citizens the legal ground to go after someone who uses their image without their consent.

This specifically covers deepfakes, those videos of a person’s face or body that have been digitally altered so they appear to be someone else.

The Scandinavian nation has put forth a proposal to amend its copyright laws so that everyone owns the rights to their own face, their own voice, and their body. Current laws aren’t quite up to snuff when it comes to protecting people from having their likenesses twisted and contorted.

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Denmark Plans Sweeping Ban on Online Deepfakes to Combat “Misinformation”

Denmark is preparing legislation that would outlaw the sharing of deepfake content online, a move that could open the door to unprecedented restrictions on digital expression.

Deepfakes, which can involve photos, videos, or audio recordings manipulated by artificial intelligence, are designed to convincingly fabricate actions or statements that never occurred.

While governments cite misinformation concerns, broad bans risk stifling creativity, political commentary, and legitimate speech.

The Danish Ministry of Culture announced Thursday that lawmakers from many parties are backing the effort to clamp down on the distribution of AI-generated imitations of people’s appearances or voices.

The forthcoming proposal, according to officials, aims to block the spread of deepfakes by making it illegal to share such material. Culture Minister Jakob Engel-Schmidt argued that “it was high time that we now create a safeguard against the spread of misinformation and at the same time send a clear signal to the tech giants.”

But these assurances do little to address the chilling effect such measures could have on free expression.

Authorities describe the planned rules as among the most comprehensive attempts yet to confront deepfakes and their potential to mislead the public.

The United States last year introduced legislation criminalizing the non-consensual sharing of intimate deepfakes, while South Korea has imposed tougher punishments for similar offenses and tightened regulations on social media platforms.

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Florida Police: Christian School Teacher May Have Used Student Images to Create AI Child Porn

A sixth-grade teacher in Central Florida was arrested this week on a host of charges for possessing child pornography, apparently created with online AI technology and possibly using student photos from his Christian school.

State Attorney General James Uthmeier’s office charged David McKeown of Holly Hill with 19 enhanced felony counts of possession of child sexual abuse material and six counts of possession of animal pornography, according to a statement released by the office.

McKeown was arrested Friday by the Holly Hill Police Department at his home in Volusia County. He was a sixth-grade teacher at United Brethren in Christ (UBIC) Academy, a school affiliated with the UBIC church.

Holly Hill Police Department’s investigation alleges that McKeown shared and downloaded pornographic images depicting child porn via Discord, an online chat service, while at school and connected to the school’s Wi-Fi network.

Some 30 images were allegedly shared, including six files depicting McKeown sexually abusing animals, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLA) reported.

Uthmeier said in the statement:

As a teacher, parents trusted Mr. McKeown to impart knowledge to their children. Instead, he spent parts of the school day sending and receiving child sex abuse material and providing other pedophiles with UBIC Academy students’ personal information. What he did is beyond betrayal — it’s devastating and sick.

The investigation was launched early this month after receiving a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which tracks the internet for exploitative content involving minors, Orlando’s Fox 35 reported.

The news outlet also reported authorities believe McKeown used AI technology to create the pornographic images and may have used photos of real children, perhaps his own students. The investigation is continuing.

Detectives seized a number of devices from the teacher’s home in Holly Hill and from the school. He was booked into the Volusia County jail and a judge denied him the possibility of bond.

If convicted, he faces up to 315 years in prison, officials said.

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The AI Slop Fight Between Iran and Israel

As Israel and Iran trade blows in a quickly escalating conflict that risks engulfing the rest of the region as well as a more direct confrontation between Iran and the U.S., social media is being flooded with AI-generated media that claims to show the devastation, but is fake.

The fake videos and images show how generative AI has already become a staple of modern conflict. On one end, AI-generated content of unknown origin is filling the void created by state-sanctioned media blackouts with misinformation, and on the other end, the leaders of these countries are sharing AI-generated slop to spread the oldest forms of xenophobia and propaganda.

If you want to follow a war as it’s happening, it’s easier than ever. Telegram channels post live streams of bombing raids as they happen and much of the footage trickles up to X, TikTok, and other social media platforms. There’s more footage of conflict than there’s ever been, but a lot of it is fake.

A few days ago, Iranian news outlets reported that Iran’s military had shot down three F-35s. Israel denied it happened. As the claim spread so did supposed images of the downed jet. In one, a massive version of the jet smolders on the ground next to a town. The cockpit dwarfs the nearby buildings and tiny people mill around the downed jet like Lilliputians surrounding Gulliver.

It’s a fake, an obvious one, but thousands of people shared it online. Another image of the supposedly downed jet showed it crashed in a field somewhere in the middle of the night. Its wings were gone and its afterburner still glowed hot. This was also a fake.

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Teen Dies by Suicide After Being Targeted in AI-Generated ‘Sextortion’ Scheme

A 16-year-old Kentucky boy reportedly committed suicide shortly after he was blackmailed with AI-generated nude images, an increasingly common scheme known as “sextortion.”

Elijah Heacock of Glasgow, Kentucky, received a text including an AI-generated nude photo depicting himself and a demand that he pay $3,000 to prevent the image from being sent to family and friends, according to a report by KFDA.

On February 28, shortly after receiving the message, the teen died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Elijah’s parents, John Burnett and Shannon Heacock, told CBS that they didn’t have a solid understanding of the circumstances that led to their son’s death until they found the messages on his phone.

Heacock said she now believes her son was a victim of a sextortion scheme.

“Sextortion is a form of child sexual exploitation where children are threatened or blackmailed, most often with the possibility of sharing with the public a nude or sexual images of them, by a person who demands additional sexual content, sexual activity or money from the child,” the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) explains.

“This crime may happen when a child has shared an image with someone they thought they knew or trusted, but in many cases they are targeted by an individual they met online who obtained a sexual image from the child through deceit, coercion, or some other method,” the NCMEC continued.

“In many cases, the blackmailers may have stolen or taken images of another person and they are communicating through a fake account,” the organization added.

Elijah’s parents said they had never heard of sextortion until law enforcement began investigating their son’s death.

“The people that are after our children are well organized,” Burnett said. “They are well financed, and they are relentless. They don’t need the photos to be real, they can generate whatever they want, and then they use it to blackmail the child.”

NCMEC says sextortion schemes have skyrocketed, revealing the organization has received more than 500,000 reports of sextortion against minors in just the last year.

Since 2021, at least 20 young people have committed suicide as a result of becoming victims of sextortion scams, according to the FBI.

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Welcome to the age of paranoia as deepfakes and scams abound

These days, when Nicole Yelland receives a meeting request from someone she doesn’t already know, she conducts a multistep background check before deciding whether to accept. Yelland, who works in public relations for a Detroit-based nonprofit, says she’ll run the person’s information through Spokeo, a personal data aggregator that she pays a monthly subscription fee to use. If the contact claims to speak Spanish, Yelland says, she will casually test their ability to understand and translate trickier phrases. If something doesn’t quite seem right, she’ll ask the person to join a Microsoft Teams call—with their camera on.

If Yelland sounds paranoid, that’s because she is. In January, before she started her current nonprofit role, Yelland says, she got roped into an elaborate scam targeting job seekers. “Now, I do the whole verification rigamarole any time someone reaches out to me,” she tells WIRED.

Digital imposter scams aren’t new; messaging platforms, social media sites, and dating apps have long been rife with fakery. In a time when remote work and distributed teams have become commonplace, professional communications channels are no longer safe, either. The same artificial intelligence tools that tech companies promise will boost worker productivity are also making it easier for criminals and fraudsters to construct fake personas in seconds.

On LinkedIn, it can be hard to distinguish a slightly touched-up headshot of a real person from a too-polished, AI-generated facsimile. Deepfake videos are getting so good that longtime email scammers are pivoting to impersonating people on live video calls. According to the US Federal Trade Commission, reports of job and employment related scams nearly tripled from 2020 to 2024, and actual losses from those scams have increased from $90 million to $500 million.

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House passes “Take it Down Act,” sending revenge porn bill backed by Melania Trump to president’s desk

The House passed a bipartisan bill Monday that makes it a federal crime to post real and fake sexually explicit imagery online of a person without their consent, sending the legislation that was backed by first lady Melania Trump to the president’s desk. 

The bill, known as the “Take It Down Act,” cleared the lower chamber in a 409-2 vote. The two “no” votes came from Republicans. The Senate unanimously passed the measure in February. 

The legislation requires social media companies and other websites to remove images and videos, including deepfakes generated by artificial intelligence, within 48 hours after a victim’s request. 

“If you’re a victim of revenge porn or AI-generated explicit imagery, your life changes forever,” Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, said at a March 3 roundtable promoting the bill. 

Cruz, who introduced the bill, recalled the experience of a teenage victim, Elliston Berry, whose classmate used an app to create explicit images of her and then sent them to her classmates. Berry’s mother had tried unsuccessfully to get Snapchat to remove the images for months before she contacted Cruz’s office for help. 

“It should not take a sitting senator or sitting member of Congress picking up the phone to get a picture down or video down,” Cruz said. 

The first lady, who rarely appears in public, attended the March discussion at the U.S. Capitol to advocate for the bill’s passage in the House. 

“It’s heartbreaking to witness young teens, especially girls, grappling with the overwhelming challenges posed by malicious online content like deep fakes,” she said. “This toxic environment can be severely damaging.” 

The first lady applauded Congress after its passage and said the bipartisan vote made a “powerful statement that we stand united in protecting the dignity, privacy, and safety of our children.” 

“I am thankful to the Members of Congress — both in the House and Senate — who voted to protect the well-being of our youth,” she said in a statement. 

According to the FBI, in recent years there have been an alarming number of cases where victims have been extorted that have ended in suicide. Lawmakers said they hope the bill will save lives by providing recourse for victims. 

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Congress Takes Another Step Toward Enabling Broad Internet Censorship

The House Energy and Commerce Committee on Tuesday advanced the TAKE IT DOWN Act (S. 146) , a bill that seeks to speed up the removal of certain kinds of troubling online content. While the bill is meant to address a serious problem—the distribution of non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII)—the notice-and-takedown system it creates is an open invitation for powerful people to pressure websites into removing content they dislike. 

As we’ve written before, while protecting victims of these heinous privacy invasions is a legitimate goal, good intentions alone are not enough to make good policy. 

This bill mandates a notice-and-takedown system that threatens free expression, user privacy, and due process, without meaningfully addressing the problem it claims to solve. The “takedown” provision applies to a much broader category of content—potentially any images involving intimate or sexual content at all—than the narrower NCII definitions found elsewhere in the bill. The bill contains no protections against frivolous or bad-faith takedown requests. Lawful content—including satire, journalism, and political speech—could be wrongly censored. 

The legislation’s 48-hour takedown deadline means that online service providers, particularly smaller ones, will have to comply quickly to avoid legal risks. That time crunch will make it impossible for services to verify the content is in fact NCII. Instead, services will rely on automated filters—infamously blunt tools that frequently flag legal content, from fair-use commentary to news reporting.

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