AOC Sounds Alarm Over Deepfakes After She’s Targeted with AI Porn: ‘People Are Going to Kill Themselves Over This’

(Alamy Live News via AP)

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY) is planning on targeting AI-generated porn with legislation after her image was used in deepfake images.

Speaking with Loreina O’Neil for Rolling Stone, Ocasio-Cortez recalled scrolling through X, formerly Twitter, when she came across a deepfake image of herself performing a sexual act.

“As a survivor of physical sexual assault, it adds a level of dysregulation,” the congresswoman said. “It resurfaces trauma, while I’m trying to — in the middle of a fucking meeting.”

She called deepfakes a “way of digitizing violent humiliation against other people” and tied them to other problems women face today. According to a study by the cybersecurity company DeepTrace Labs, more than 90% of deepfake videos are nonconsensual.

“It’s so important to me that people understand that this is not just a form of interpersonal violence, it’s not just about the harm that’s done to the victim,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “Because this technology threatens to do it at scale — this is about class subjugation. It’s a subjugation of entire people. And then when you do intersect that with abortion, when you do intersect that with debates over bodily autonomy, when you are able to actively subjugate all women in society on a scale of millions, at once digitally, it’s a direct connection [with] taking their rights away.”

There has been past legislation aimed at tackling deepfake technology, especially as mental health concerns have grown.

“Kids are going to kill themselves over this. People are going to kill themselves over this,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

The lawmaker is leading the House version of the Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits (DEFIANCE) Act of 2024. The legislation would expand the Violence Against Women Act to make it easier to sue and stop the nonconsensual distribution of AI porn.

“The DEFIANCE Act will allow victims to finally defend their reputations and take civil action against individuals who produced, distributed, or received digital forgeries. I’m grateful to lead this legislation with Senator Dick Durbin, along with my Democratic and Republican colleagues in both the House and Senate,” the congresswoman said in a statement last month about the legislation.

Ocasio Cortez described the AI-generated imagery as a response to her age, race, and gender.

She argued it is one way in which critics are doing everything in their power to get her out of office.

“And guess what, motherfuckers?” she said. “I’m not going anywhere. Deal with it.”

Read the entire Rolling Stone interview here.

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