Woonsocket Radio News Room

Edwards bill takes aim at ‘deepfake’ porn; would include AI digital images as part of indecent materials law

STATE HOUSE — Rep. John G. Edwards (D-Dist. 70, Tiverton), the Majority Floor Manager of the House of Representatives, is sponsoring legislation that takes aim at “deepfake” porn by amending Rhode Island’s existing revenge pornography statute that was enacted in 2018.

Deepfake porn is visual pornographic content created through the use of artificial intelligence (AI) where someone’s likeness is imposed into sexually explicit images. The practice began with targeting celebrities and politicians, but as technology has advanced, it’s become mainstream and can easily target average citizens.

“Six months ago, I never would have dreamed that this bill would be necessary, but today it’s really out of control,” Representative Edwards told the House Judiciary Committee last week. “People from all walks of life are being victimized by AI porn. It is being used to humiliate and shame people by putting it on the internet. It’s becoming more and more prolific and most of the victims are women and children. Teenage girls around the country are finding out that their classmates are using apps to transform their social media posts into nudes and sharing them. It really is a new frontier of sexual abuse.”

The bill (2024-H 8129) would include visual images that are created or manipulated by digitization, or without the consent of the person, within the purview of the crime of unauthorized dissemination of indecent material.

The most popular website dedicated to sexualized deepfakes, usually created and shared without consent, receives around 17 million hits a month. The content almost exclusively targets women. There has also been an exponential rise in “nudifying” apps that transform ordinary images of women and girls into nudes.