Booker signs onto amended anti-deepfake bill he previously blocked

In September, Senator Cory Booker blocked an anti-deepfake bill sponsored by Republican Senator Ted Cruz from passing the Senate unanimously, saying that he had concerns that the bill was overbroad and could have unintended consequences. The incident prompted recriminations on both sides, with Cruz and Booker each claiming that the other was playing political games with an important piece of legislation.

But the two senators have engaged in negotiations in the two months since then, and they’ve been productive: Booker has now signed onto the bill as a co-sponsor, saying that his concerns have been addressed and that he hopes the Senate passes the amended version of the bill.

“The sharing of nonconsensual explicit images online is a serious and urgent problem,” Booker said in a statement. “It is imperative that we craft laws to protect people from harassment, hold wrongdoers accountable, and compel online platforms to quickly remove such content. Through bipartisan negotiation, we improved the bill to ensure that victims are better protected and all platforms that publish these sorts of images are held to account under the law.”

The bill, the Take It Down Act, criminalizes the sharing of non-consensual explicit images, including those created using artificial intelligence (also known as deepfakes), and requires social media sites to implement procedures for taking such content down. The intent of the bill is widely popular, but Booker – among other Senate Democrats – had concerns about whether it could lead to prosecutions beyond the intended scope of the bill.

Those worries led Booker to block the bill from passing via unanimous consent (something that any single senator is capable of doing under the Senate’s rules). His decision led to blowback not only from Cruz, but also from teenage anti-deepfake activist Francesca Mani, a Westfield native who said her senator’s decision “failed me and my fellow victims and has left us vulnerable.”

But now, thanks to changes made in the last two months, Booker is far more comfortable with the bill. The new draft of the bill expands the types of websites subject to the bill’s take-down provisions and adds a more stringent requirement that websites make users aware of their rights under the law, among other changes.

“As a cosponsor of the new version of this legislation, I look forward to its swift passage in the Senate,” Booker said.