The former reality TV star, who has previously appeared on Capitol Hill to advocate for a youth welfare bill, returned to Washington to push for the passage of the Defiance Act. The measure cleared the Senate last week with unanimous support.
"When I was 19 years old, a private intimate video of me was shared with the world without my consent," Hilton said, appearing alongside a bipartisan group of congresswomen, including the bill's lead sponsors, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Laurel Lee (R-Fla.).
"People called it a scandal. It wasn't. It was abuse," she continued. "There were no laws at the time to protect me. There weren't even words for what had been done to me. The internet was still new, and so was the cruelty that came with it."
The Defiance Act would give victims a civil right of action to sue over deepfake pornography. It follows the passage of another deepfake bill last year, the Take It Down Act, which made it a federal crime to publish nonconsensual sexually explicit deepfakes.
The recent movement on the Defiance Act comes amid a surge in sexualized AI images on Elon Musk's X.
The tech billionaire's AI chatbot Grok, which is integrated into the social media platform, has reportedly produced thousands of sexualized images of women and children over the past few weeks in response to user requests.
X has since barred all users from using Grok to edit images of real people in revealing clothing, in addition to geoblocking users from generating such images in "jurisdictions where it's illegal." Image editing and generation tools are also now restricted to paid subscribers.
"Today, what happened to me then is happening now to millions of women and girls in a new and more terrifying way," Hilton added Thursday.
"Before someone had to betray your trust and steal something real. Now, all it takes is a computer and a stranger's imagination. Deepfake pornography has become an epidemic."
Ocasio-Cortez said that lawmakers have had "positive and encouraging conversations" with Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) about getting the Defiance Act to a vote in the House "as quickly as possible."
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