Take It Down Act combatting 'deepfakes' revenge porn passes U.S. Senate

DALLAS - A bipartisan revenge porn bill unanimously passed the U.S. Senate.

Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is leading the effort and is calling on the U.S. House to act before the end of the month. 

The revenge porn issue impacted a Fort Worth teen, and it’s happened to others around the country. 

The Take It Down Act would force social media companies to move faster in removing graphic images. 

Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) and Cruz’s bill called the Take It Down Act unanimously passed the U.S. Senate. 

With a few weeks left in the year, Cruz is pushing the House to pass the bill as soon as possible. 

"This is a growing problem," he said. "We're seeing more and more young women, teenagers and adult women being targeted and being victimized."

The bill was created to stop what is called deepfakes, AI-generated explicit images of people, posted on social media. 

Elliston Berry is a 15-year-old from Fort Worth. It happened to her when she was 14. 

"At my school, it's kind of a known fact of what happened to me. So people are really hesitant to talk about it," she said. "But I’m hearing cases after cases of more people being victims. And a lot of people ask me questions because it's such a fascinating topic, and the concept is really just so outrageous. But a lot of the conversations are more bringing awareness, which honestly is what we need."

The law would make it a crime to post the images. It would also require social media companies to take it down if a victim says this image was done without their consent. 

Klobuchar says this is not about infringing on First Amendment rights. 

"This isn't about limiting self-expression," she said. "It’s about protecting Americans’ privacy, which is also a right."

Cruz said Berry's mother tried to get the image removed for months, but nothing happened. 

The challenge before the House is passing the bill before they head home for Christmas. 

Cruz says the speaker can put the bill on an expedited calendar to fast-track the process. 

"If you tweet out right now, today, sing a song from ‘The Lion King,’ social media will take that down within hours because you can't send out copyrighted material," he said. "So every one of these tech companies has an office devoted to doing this. And so what we're doing is saying if somebody is being victimized by photos or videos or any other fake lie that is going after them, they should have a right to take that abuse offline."

Cruz said if it doesn’t pass this year, he is confident it will still pass under a new Congress. But he thinks action needs to happen now to protect young people.