America’s dangerous, messy deepfakes crackdown is here
A law requiring social networks to quickly remove sexual deepfakes and other nonconsensual imagery is now fully in force. But experts warn the policy could do little to help victims - and at worst could facilitate censorship online.
Last May, President Donald Trump signed the Take It Down Act, a law addressing nonconsensual intimate imagery (NCII). The law immediately criminalized distributing NCII, whether in the form of real or AI-generated material, something many states at least partially do already. But its namesake takedown provision is more sweeping. Taking effect a year after the law's passage - on May 19th of 2026 - it requires on …