Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) has introduced a bill that would create criminal penalties for posting intimate pictures or "deepfake" pictures without consent.
The "TAKE IT DOWN Act" would create a criminal offense to post a picture that may have been taken with the other person's consent but that person did not consent to "have it posted to the world." The bill would also create a criminal offense to publish a "deepfake" without a person's knowledge.
The measure would also require tech companies to take a picture down within two days of a request.
During an interview on TMZ this week, Cruz said he started working on the bill after a case in Aledo where a boy doctored a picture of a 14-year-old classmate.
"One Monday morning, she was getting ready for school and suddenly her phone blew up. She started getting phone calls and texts from her friends," Cruz said. "It turned out another teenaged boy at her school had taken a picture of her, a perfectly innocent picture on social media, and had gone to an app and used it to make a deepfake of her and made it appear she was nude."
Cruz says the boy did the same thing to several girls, created fake Snapchat accounts and sent the pictures to classmates. Cruz says the boy transferred to another school, "but he faced no legal penalties, no consequences."
Cruz says Snapchat also refused to remove the pictures for nine months until his office put him in touch with Snapchat's chief executive.
"Frankly, you shouldn't have to have a sitting member of Congress make a call on your behalf," he says. "The victim should have that right written into law. That's what this bill will do."
Cruz worked on the bill with Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), and it is sponsored by eleven other Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Senate.
Last month, fellow Texas Senator John Cornyn introduced another bill with Maggie Hassan (D-NH) that would also create a criminal offense but also let victims file lawsuits against websites and people who share doctored pictures without consent. That bill would create punishments including fines and up to two years in prison as well as civil penalties up to $150,000.
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