Paris Hilton Joins Push for DEFIANCE Act on Deepfakes

Paris Hilton joined Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Republican Rep. Laurel Lee of Florida on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on Thursday to urge passage of the bipartisan DEFIANCE Act, a bill aimed at protecting victims of nonconsensual AI-generated deepfakes depicting intimate activity or nudity.

The legislation, formally known as the Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits Act, would create a civil cause of action allowing individuals to sue those who knowingly produce, distribute, solicit, or possess such content with intent to distribute it. It passed the Senate unanimously in July 2024 and again earlier this month, and supporters are now pressing House Speaker Mike Johnson to bring it to a vote in the House.

Hilton, a survivor of image-based abuse, drew on her own experience to highlight the need for the law. In 2004, when she was 19, an intimate video recorded by her then-boyfriend Rick Salomon was released without her consent. She has described feeling pressured into the recording and has long characterized the incident as abuse rather than a scandal. "When I was 19 years old, a private, intimate video of me was shared with the...