US Senate News:
Source: United States Senator for Minnesota Amy Klobuchar
The TAKE IT DOWN Act criminalizes the nonconsensual publication of explicit images, real and AI-generated, and requires websites to remove them
WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) announced that their bipartisan TAKE IT DOWN Act passed the House and is headed to the President’s desk to be signed into law. Representatives Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL) and Madeleine Dean (D-PA) led the companion legislation that passed today.
The bill unanimously passed the Senate in February, and it includes the Klobuchar and Senator John Cornyn’s (R-TX) Stopping Harmful Image Exploitation and Limiting Distribution (SHIELD) Act, which addresses the online exploitation of explicit, private images and passed the Senate last July.
The TAKE IT DOWN Act would criminalize the publication of non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII), including AI-generated NCII, and require social media and similar websites to have in place procedures to remove such content within 48 hours of notice from a victim.
“We must provide victims of online abuse with the legal protections they need when intimate images are shared without their consent, especially now that deepfakes are creating horrifying new opportunities for abuse,” said Sen. Klobuchar. “These images can ruin lives and reputations, but now that our bipartisan legislation is becoming law, victims will be able to have this material removed from social media platforms and law enforcement can hold perpetrators accountable. ”
“The passage of the TAKE IT DOWN Act is a historic win in the fight to protect victims of revenge porn and deepfake abuse. This victory belongs first and foremost to the heroic survivors who shared their stories and the advocates who never gave up. By requiring social media companies to take down this abusive content quickly, we are sparing victims from repeated trauma and holding predators accountable,”said Sen. Cruz. “This day would not have been possible without the courage and perseverance of Elliston Berry, Francesca Mani, Breeze Liu, and Brandon Guffey, whose powerful voices drove this legislation forward. I am especially grateful to my colleagues—including Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Rep. Maria Salazar, Rep. Madeleine Dean, First Lady Melania Trump, and House Leadership—for locking arms in this critical mission to protect Americans from online exploitation.”
“The TAKE IT DOWN Act’s passage is a significant step forward in Congress’ responsibility to protect the privacy and dignity of Americans against bad actors and the most harmful developments of AI,” said Rep. Dean. “It takes only minutes to create a deepfake or share intimate images without consent, yet the lasting consequences devastate its victims — often girls and women. Our bill requires platforms to remove these horrifying images and videos from the Internet within 48 hours. I’m deeply grateful to work with Sen. Klobuchar, Sen. Cruz, and Rep. Salazar to create this bipartisan federal law.”
“The TAKE IT DOWN Act’s passage is a bipartisan victory to protect victims of real and deepfake revenge pornography,” said Rep. Salazar. “This bill shows Congress at its best, working together to empower victims, especially women and girls. It equally holds offenders and Big Tech accountable.”
The TAKE IT DOWN Act would protect and empower victims of real and deepfake NCII while respecting speech by:
- Criminalizing the publication of NCII in interstate commerce. The bill makes it unlawful for a person to knowingly publish, or threaten to publish, NCII on social media and other online platforms. NCII is defined to include realistic, computer-generated pornographic images and videos that depict identifiable, real people. The bill also clarifies that a victim consenting to the creation of an authentic image does not mean that the victim has consented to its publication.
- Protecting good-faith efforts to assist victims. The bill permits the good-faith disclosure of NCII, such as to law enforcement, in narrow cases.
- Requiring websites to take down NCII upon notice from the victim. Social media and other websites would be required to have in place procedures to remove NCII, pursuant to a valid request from a victim, within 48 hours. Websites must also make reasonable efforts to remove copies of the images. The FTC is charged with enforcement of this section.
- Protecting lawful speech. The bill is narrowly tailored to criminalize knowingly publishing NCII without chilling lawful speech. The bill conforms to current First Amendment jurisprudence by requiring that computer-generated NCII meet a “reasonable person” test for appearing indistinguishable from an authentic image.
The legislation is co-sponsored by Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Cory Booker (D-NJ), John Barrasso (R-WY), Jacky Rosen (D-NV), Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), John Hickenlooper (D-CO), Ted Budd (R-NC), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Roger Wicker (R-MS), Todd Young (R-IN), John Curtis (R-UT), Tim Sheehy (R-MT), Raphael Warnock (D-GA), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Gary Peters (D-MI), Adam Schiff (D-CA), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH).
In 2024, at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing titled “Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis,” Senator Klobuchar was part of a hearing that questioned the CEO of Discord Inc., Jason Citron, the CEO of TikTok Inc., Shou Chew, the Co-founder and CEO of Snap Inc., Evan Spiegel, the CEO of X (formerly Twitter), Linda Yaccarino, and the Founder and CEO of Meta (formerly Facebook), Mark Zuckerberg, about their companies turning a blind eye when young children joined their platforms, the risk of sexual exploitation, using algorithms that push harmful content, and providing a venue for drug traffickers to sell deadly narcotics like fentanyl.
In 2017, Klobuchar and former Senators Richard Burr (R-NC) and Kamala Harris (D-CA), introduced the first version of this legislation, the bipartisan Ending Nonconsensual Online User Graphic Harassment (ENOUGH) Act.
