President Donald Trump signed the Take It Down Act, championed by first lady Melania Trump, at the White House on Monday.
Under the law, it is a criminal offense to post a real or artificially generated sexually explicit photo of a person without his or her consent. The first lady put her signature alongside the president’s on the Take It Down Act, after he invited her to sign it.
“Come on, sign it anyway… She deserves to sign it,” Trump said to cheers.
Moments earlier, the first lady said the signing of the bill would be “a national victory that will help parents and families protect children from online exploitation.”
“This legislation is a powerful step forward in our efforts to ensure that every American, especially young people, can feel better protected from their image or identity being abused through nonconsensual intimate imagery (NCII),” she said.
She also warned of the dangers that AI and social media pose to America’s youth:
Artificial Intelligence and social media are the digital candy for the next generation: Sweet, addictive and engineered to have an impact on the cognitive development of our children. But unlike sugar, these new technologies can be weaponized, shape beliefs, and sadly, affect emotions and even be deadly.
The first lady noted that the values of her “Be Best” initiative are “reflected in the law of the land” through the Take It Down Act.
The president followed with his remarks and acknowledged the many women who have been harassed through non-consensual posting of sexual images, whether real or AI-generated:
With the rise of AI image generation, countless women have been harassed with deep fakes and other explicit images distributed against their will. This is wrong and it’s just so horribly wrong. And it’s a very abusive situation, like in some cases people have never seen before, and today we’re making it totally illegal.
The bipartisan bill had comprehensive support in Congress, passing the House of Representatives by a vote of 409-2 after advancing through the Senate 100-0, as Breitbart News noted.
The broad coalition of Republican and Democrat cosponsors in the Senate included Sens. John Barrasso (R-WY), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Tim Sheehy (R-MT), and Raphael Warnock (D-GA).
