Trump will signal the Take It Down Act criminalizing AI deepfakes right now

President Donald Trump is about to signal the Take It Down Act right now, according to CNN. The act is a chunk of bipartisan laws that criminalizes the publication of “nonconsensual intimate visible depictions,” together with AI deepfakes. The legislation made it by means of the US Home of Representatives in April 2025, prompting concern from free speech advocates that consider components of the legislation might be simply abused to curtail speech.

The Take It Down Act was created to handle the unfold of nonconsensual, sexually exploitative pictures on-line. Legal guidelines exist addressing the difficulty on the state degree, and a few on-line platforms have already got strategies for requesting a nonconsensual picture or video be taken down. This new legislation would set a federal commonplace, although, making taking down posts obligatory and directing corporations to create a system for requesting pictures or movies be eliminated, below the supervision of the Federal Commerce Fee.

The problem with the legislation as written, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is that its takedown provision “applies to a much wider class of content material…than the narrower NCII [nonconsensual intimate image] definitions discovered elsewhere within the invoice.” The EFF additionally means that the quick timeframe of 48 hours that the Take It Down Act requires implies that smaller on-line platforms will in all probability simply take away posts once they obtain a criticism moderately than confirm that the put up really violates the legislation.

Trump has expressed curiosity in profiting from the brand new legislation, as nicely. “I’m going to make use of that invoice for myself, too, in the event you don’t thoughts. There’s no person will get handled worse than I do on-line. No person,” Trump stated throughout a joint session of Congress in March. Given the lopsided composition of the present FTC and the Trump administration’s already free interpretation of current legal guidelines, it isn’t exhausting to think about how the unique intentions of the Take It Down Act might be twisted.