The DEFIANCE Act Would Let Deepfake Victims Sue. It's Still Stuck in the House.

Reviewed by Survivor Rights Center · Updated 2026-10-21

What the DEFIANCE Act would do

The bill's full name, Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits, gets shortened in practice to the DEFIANCE Act. If passed, it would create a federal civil cause of action for people depicted in sexually explicit deepfake images or video made without their consent. Under the bill, a victim could sue anyone who knowingly produced, distributed, solicited, or possessed such material with intent to distribute it.

That is a meaningful gap-filler. Existing federal criminal law has not kept pace with AI-generated sexual imagery, and many states still lack a clear civil remedy for this specific harm. The DEFIANCE Act would let a victim go directly to federal court rather than relying on a patchwork of state laws that may not address deepfakes at all.

How the damages and filing deadline would work

The bill sets liquidated damages at $150,000, meaning a victim would not have to prove a specific dollar amount of harm to recover that base sum. That figure rises to $250,000 in cases where the deepfake was created in connection with an actual or attempted sexual assault, stalking, or harassment of the victim, whether by the defendant or by someone else the images were used to facilitate harming. Victims could also pursue actual damages, including any profit the defendant made from the images.

For filing deadlines, the bill would give a victim 10 years from when they reasonably discover the deepfake images to bring a civil claim. If the victim was a minor when the images were created, that 10-year clock would instead start running from the date they turn 18. That is considerably longer than the filing windows attached to many ordinary civil claims, reflecting how long it can take victims to even learn that manipulated images of them exist.

Why it passed the Senate but is stuck in the House

The DEFIANCE Act passed the Senate by unanimous consent, led by two senators, an Illinois Democrat and a South Carolina Republican. One senator has argued the harm from these images is real even though the content itself is fabricated. In the House, the bill has bipartisan sponsorship, led by a New York congresswoman alongside a Republican co-lead, and has attracted close to 60 cosponsors from both parties.

Despite that bipartisan support, the bill has not received a floor vote in the House. Reporting on the stall points to friction unrelated to the bill's substance: some House Republican leaders are described as reluctant to hand a high-profile legislative win to the congresswoman given her prominence as a potential future presidential candidate. One House Republican cosponsor has publicly pushed back on that rationale, arguing a lawmaker's political trajectory should not determine whether victims get a vote on a remedy this specific.

What this means for survivors right now

Until the DEFIANCE Act clears the House and is signed into law, it creates no enforceable rights. Victims of nonconsensual sexual deepfakes today must rely on whatever state law, platform takedown policy, or existing federal statute happens to apply to their specific situation, and coverage varies widely from state to state.

The renewed attention to this bill has come alongside a string of controversies involving AI image-generation tools being used to create nonconsensual sexual content, which has kept pressure on Congress even as the House vote remains stalled. Survivors and advocates tracking this issue should watch for a scheduled House floor vote as the clearest sign the bill is actually moving, rather than relying on cosponsor counts alone.

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Who Could Be Sued Under the DEFIANCE Act

The bill's civil claim is not limited to whoever created the original image. It reaches several roles in the chain that gets nonconsensual deepfakes made and spread.

1. The person who produced the deepfake: Anyone who knowingly creates the sexually explicit, digitally altered image or video without the subject's consent.
2. The person who distributed it: Anyone who knowingly shares, posts, or otherwise circulates the material once it exists.
3. The person who solicited it: Anyone who knowingly requests or commissions the creation of the deepfake, even if someone else produces it.
4. A knowing possessor with intent to distribute: Simply holding the material is not enough on its own; the bill targets possession paired with intent to further spread it.
5. Anyone profiting from the images: The bill allows recovery of any profits a defendant made in connection with the deepfakes, on top of liquidated or actual damages.

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