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First Lady Melania Trump appeared in front of Congress on Monday to lobby to take on revenge porn. In her first solo public appearance since she resumed the role of first lady, Trump met with Congress to advocate for the “Take it Down Act” which would make it a federal crime to knowingly publish or threaten to publish intimate imagery online without an individual’s consent. The act would also include any “deepfake” content generated by AI that resembles an identifiable person.
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During a roundtable discussion, the First Lady spoke of the threat the issue poses for young women and girls.“It’s heartbreaking to witness young teens, especially girls, grappling with the overwhelming challenges posed by malicious online content, like deepfakes,” Trump said. “Every young person deserves a safe online space to express themself freely, without the looming threat of exploitation or harm.”
Do all states protect against it?
While there is no federal law addressing revenge porn, nearly all states—save for South Carolina— have laws around the issue. However, the laws and penalties vary widely from state to state—and not all laws extend to cover AI generated images.
What are some high-profile examples?
Many revenge porn cases are beginning to go to court as more states adopt laws criminalizing non-consentual pornography. In 2024, a Texas woman was awarded $1.2 billion dollars after her boyfriend posted intimate photos of her online after their breakup. In the first two cases to be tried under New York’s 2019 revenge porn law the plaintiffs were awarded $1.5 million and $2 million.
Many female celebrities have found themselves victims of deepfake porn. In 2019, Scarlett Johansson spoke out about the dangers of the practice after her face was grafted onto explicit videos.
More recently, sexually explicit deepfakes of Taylor Swift bypassed moderation filters on X—recieving over 27 million views and more than 260,000 likes in 19 hours before the account that posted the images was suspended.
Why does Melania Trump care about it?
During her first term, the First Lady launched a youth initiative called “Be Best”—a pillar of which focused on tackling online safety for youth. Melania Trump appears to be working to revive the initiative as part of her return to the White House.
Digital privacy experts, meanwhile, have warned that, while progress needs to be made to combat real and deepfaked non-consensual intimate imagery, the bill’s lack of guardrails could threaten user privacy and freedom of expression.
“In its current form, the bill creates a notice and takedown (NTD) mechanism that would result in the removal of not just nonconsensual intimate imagery but also speech that is neither illegal nor actually NDII,” a group of digital privacy organizations including the Center for Democracy & Technology and the Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote in a letter to to the Senate earlier this month. “This mechanism is likely unconstitutional and will undoubtedly have a censorious impact on users’ free expression.”
