Virginia’s 2014 law banning the distribution of revenge porn has been updated to include deepfakes, or videos in which software and machine learning can create synthetic media of any person.
TechCrunch reports that the law, effective Monday, makes it a Class 1 misdemeanor to share videos or photos of someone without their consent, even if it is not actually them in the video. Photoshopped images or any other manipulated media are also covered by the law. Anyone who shares this content with the intent to “coerce, harass or intimidate” can face up to $2,500 and one year in jail, according to TechSpot.
The updated bill was passed by the Virginia General Assembly in March, CNET reports, and signed by Gov. Ralph Northam. It’s going into effect shortly after the Linux and Windows app DeepNude was pulled by its creator in June, four days after it went live, due to backlash. The app used machine learning to produce videos of women without clothing from videos of them fully clothed.
Privacy and defamation are the largest concerns prompting new legislation that covers deepfakes. The faces of famous women and the bodies of porn stars have been combined to create manipulated pornography that was shared on Reddit. Recently, an altered video of Nancy Pelosi showed her “slurring her words and appearing intoxicated.”
DeepNude was not the first or last program of its kind. The desktop program FakeApp brought deepfakes to the masses in March and remains available for download. Forty-six states currently have laws barring the distribution of revenge porn, but only a handful of states have set out to legislate deepfakes.
READ MORE:
- People are Photoshopping Ivanka Trump into places she doesn’t belong
- Border Patrol officers reportedly mocked migrant deaths in secret facebook group
- Eric Trump tries to jab Obama with North Korea tweets, gets called out for wrong dates
H/T TechCrunch
