Many states already have revenge porn laws in place which ban the spread or sale of nude/sexual images in order to coerce, harass or intimidate someone. Virginia is one of them. The state has now updated the law to cover deepfakes as well. Deepfakes, for those who are unaware, are computer-generated fakes that are increasingly becoming harder to identify.
More and more states have passed laws banning revenge porn in recent years, 41 states have done that so far, to be precise. Deepfakes is a term that’s widely used to describe face-swaps generated by AI for pornography.
AI can be used to swap someone’s face into a pornographic video and then spread it without their knowledge. This, as you can probably imagine, can cause some pretty serious problems for people who get blindsided by deepfakes of them.
Virginia is thus one of the first places with a law that covers deepfakes as well. An amendment to the 2014 revenge porn law states that it also extends to “a falsely created videographic or still image.” This can cover a deepfake video and even Photoshopped images. A violation of this has been classified as a Class 1 misdemeanor which not only carries up to $2,500 in fines but up to 12 months in prison as well.
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