California legislative committee approves deepfake bill

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (CN) — A California state senator invoked Taylor Swift when arguing in favor of her revenge porn bill before her chamber’s Public Safety Committee on Tuesday.

Aisha Wahab, a Hayward Democrat, said Senate Bill 926 would build upon existing revenge porn laws, updating criminal statutes in response to advancing technology. The new law would include images made or changed through “digitization” — altering an image realistically using images of that person, another person or a computer-generated image.

Almost 100% of images like these, called deepfakes, are nonconsensual. Ninety percent depict women, Wahab said.

“It is not fair and this in particular impacts women at a disproportionate level,” said Wahab, chair of the Senate Public Safety Committee.

Her bill passed out of that committee in a 5-0 vote. It now proceeds to the Senate Appropriations Committee.  

The bill, cowritten by state Senator Josh Becker, a Menlo Park Democrat, would make it a crime when someone distributes such an image that depicts intimate body parts or certain sex acts, when the person distributing it knows the victim didn’t consent to its dissemination, and the victim suffers distress.

Becker — whose district, like Wahab’s, includes Silicon Valley — said he’s concerned about the misuse of technology and called current laws not enough.

“I believe this bill is crucial this year,” he added.

The bill also was championed by Dan Felizzatto of the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.

Felizzatto said that for prosecutors to successfully convict on the existing revenge porn law, they must show that a picture depicts a body part of a person or that person in a sex act. Additionally, the picture must be distributed by someone who knew it was private and would cause the person distress.

Currently, prosecutors can’t convict someone because of a deepfake. A body part or sex act shown in a deepfake isn’t real, meaning current law can’t be used to convict.

“SB 926 would close this loophole," Felizzatto said.

State Senator Kelly Seyarto, a Murrieta Republican and committee member, called the topic an important issue. State Senator Nancy Skinner, a Berkeley Democrat who is also on the committee, said Wahab and Becker were addressing a problem unleashed by the Internet.

“I don’t know how we can even stay on top of this,” she added.

Wahab said people have seen how images online can go viral, meaning they spread across social media and websites at an intensely rapid pace. She pointed to a deepfake of Taylor Swift earlier this year that millions of people saw in a day.

Sexually explicit deepfakes of the internationally known singer appeared online in January. About a week later another deepfake of her appeared, this time depicting her as an election denier and supporter of former President Donald Trump.

Most people affected by deepfakes, including high school and college students, don’t have the resources of a world-renowned performer, Wahab said.

California lawmakers enacted their first revenge porn law in 2013, making it a misdemeanor to knowingly distribute a private picture. That law didn’t initially include “selfies,” pictures depicting the person who took the photo, though that was added in 2014.

While that original bill targeted a perpetrator who knows the victim, Wahab’s bill means an offender could be a stranger to the victim. A deepfake isn’t shared by a victim with an offender. However, the emotional damage inflicted by a photo of a real person versus a deepfake can be the same.

“It’s imperative that our laws, and I’ve said this a million times, catch up with technology,” Wahab said. “We have to start somewhere.”

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