New Mexico AG Will Follow Other States and Draft Deepfake Bill

New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez (D) is working with state lawmakers on legislation aimed at holding social media platforms more accountable for disseminating deepfake porn, he told us Wednesday.

Several states have passed new laws or updated existing measures that address AI-driven pornography issues; that list includes Texas, New York, Florida, Virginia, Indiana, South Dakota, Georgia and Washington. At the federal level, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Ted Cruz, R-Texas, are leading two separate Senate bills on the issue. Durbin’s bipartisan Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits (Defiance) Act recently passed the Senate unanimously (see 2407240021). The Senate Commerce Committee approved Cruz’s bipartisan Immobilizing Technological Deepfakes on Websites and Networks (Take It Down) Act.

During an interview at the Coalition to End Sexual Exploitation Global Summit this week, Torrez highlighted deepfakes' impact on children. The ubiquity of deepfake applications, the lack of control over content and the lack of accountability for companies means the issue will be at the forefront of the “next legal evolution,” he said. The National Center on Sexual Exploitation and Phase Alliance hosted the event.

Financial interests and Communications Decency Act Section 230 have prevented companies from taking the necessary steps to protect children, Torrez said. Society is starting to expect these companies to take more responsibility for content they host, he said: “The law is going to move in that direction.”

Torrez spoke in support of Congress passing the Kids Online Safety Act (see 2408020037), which the Senate approved in July (see 2407300042). Torrez called the bill an “important step” in providing parents with more tools to engage online. He noted bill sponsors have made progress in gaining support from LGBTQ advocates.

However, some LGBTQ groups have joined with Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Rand Paul, R-Ky., in opposing KOSA. They claim it could let the FTC enforce policies that result in censoring LGBTQ-aimed content, particularly if Donald Trump wins in November. Yet early in the legislative process, Torrez noted, bill sponsors gained the support of Human Rights Watch, which backed the bill after Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., helped update its text in February. HRC signed in support with National Center for Lesbian Rights, National Center for Transgender Equality and others. An HRC spokesperson said Thursday the group remains supportive. Other LGBTQ advocates like the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Fight for Our Future are staunchly opposed.

The tech industry’s fundamental motivation is profit, which drives tactics promoting childhood addiction, Torrez argued. Platforms will use “any excuse” to avoid changing their business practices if it means less profit, he said.

Meta and Google on Thursday denied wrongdoing after a Financial Times report alleged the two companies coordinated an advertising campaign that deliberately targeted teenagers with Instagram ads on YouTube in violation of their own policies. The report alleged Google secretly and deliberately targeted teens by labeling a large subset of users with “unknown” demographic information.

Google on Thursday said it prohibits personalized ads for users younger than 18 “period.” This policy goes “well beyond” what’s legally required and is “supported by technical safeguards,” the company added. “We've confirmed that these safeguards worked properly here. We'll also be taking additional action to reinforce with sales representatives that they must not help advertisers or agencies run campaigns attempting to work around our policies.”

Google’s “unknown” targeting option is available to all advertisers, Meta said in a statement: “We have clear principles we adhere to when it comes to how we market our apps to teens on other platforms, including not using information about their interests to target them with ads."

Fairplay said in a statement that the companies violated their policies and the trust of families. Congress should pass KOSA and the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0) as soon as possible, Executive Director Josh Golin said: “The Senate already approved this urgent legislation 91-3. Now the House needs to do the same. We cannot let teens be a target for Google's and Meta's limitless greed."