Paris Hilton appeared on Capitol Hill with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Thursday to promote a bill about AI-generated deep-fake porn. The Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits Act — DEFIANCE Act — would allow victims of these images to sue those who created and distributed them. After it passed unanimously in the Senate on January 13, Hilton showed up in Washington, D.C., to push for its passage in the House.
In a press conference, Hilton said the experience of having her sex tape leaked in 2004 inspired her to advocate for the bill. “When I was 19 years old, a private intimate video of me was shared with the world without my consent,” she said. “People called it a scandal. It wasn’t — it was abuse. There were no laws at the time to protect me. There weren’t even words for what had been done to me. The internet was still new, and so was the cruelty that came with it.”
“They sold my pain for clicks, and then they told me to be quiet, to move on, to even be grateful for the attention,” Hilton continued. “These people didn’t see me as a young woman who had been exploited. They didn’t see the panic that I felt, the humiliation or the shame. No one asked me what I lost — I lost control over my body, over my reputation. My sense of safety and self-worth was stolen from me.”
Hilton explained the parallels she sees between the aftermath of the leak and what women are now experiencing when sexually explicit AI-generated images are created and shared without their consent. “What happened to me then is happening now to millions of women and girls in a new and more terrifying way,” she said. “Before, someone had to betray your trust and steal something real. Now, all it takes is a computer and a stranger’s imagination. Deep-fake pornography has become an epidemic.”
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In her remarks, Ocasio-Cortez said that she and many of the other lawmakers who have backed the bill have also been targeted with deep-fake porn of themselves. “Not only is this a coalition of legislators, this is a coalition of survivors, of sexual harassment and in some cases abuse and assault,” she said. “As a survivor of sexual assault, this resurfaces trauma for so many people across the country. And that is what it is intended to do, because the creation of this content parallels the same exact intention of physical rape and sexual assault, which is about power, domination, and humiliation. And while the images may be digital, the harm to victims is very real.”
It’s not clear when the House will vote on the DEFIANCE Act, but House Speaker Mike Johnson has signaled his support for the legislation. “I’m certainly in favor of it,” Johnson previously told The Independent. “We’ve got to find the vote tally, but that should be a big bipartisan concern. We need to protect children online, and we need to stop these abuses.”
