Hawai‘i's two U.S. Representatives voted in line with their fellow Democrats Monday on a pair of bills governing deepfaked images and lithium batteries.
TAKE IT DOWN
The House voted 409-2 in favor of Senate Bill 146, also called the TAKE IT DOWN Act (a backronym for the bill’s lengthy true name, the “Tools to Address Known Exploitation by Immobilizing Techonolgical Deepfakes on Websites and Networks Act”).
The bill as written sets criminal penalties against creators of deepfaked pornography — or, as the bill puts it, people using “an interactive computer service to knowingly publish an intimate visual depiction of an identifiable individual."
Under the terms of the bill, "digital forgery" refers to the manipulation of a photograph "through the use of software, machine learning, artificial intelligence, or any other computer-generated or technological means," in such a way as to make it nearly indistinguishable from an authentic image.
Not all digitally forged images carry potential penalties. The bill states that only forged, sexually explicit images of a recognizable person, published without the depicted person’s consent, are covered by the bill. Furthermore, the creator must also have intended to cause harm, depicted something that is "not a matter of public concern" and depicted something the subject had not already themselves disclosed in a public or commercial setting.
Forged images depicting minors are more rigorously policed. Images intended to “abuse, humiliate, harass or degrade” the depicted person, or to be used as sexual gratification would also be banned.
Penalties for someone forging an image of an adult could include a maximum possible prison sentence of two years. Images of minors would incur a maximum three-year sentence.
People who threaten to release such images to blackmail or intimidate a person would also incur penalties of up to 18 months’ imprisonment (for images of adults) or up to 30 month (for images of minors).
The restrictions would not apply to certain excepted entities, including agents of law enforcement or intelligence organizations.
Furthermore, “covered platforms” — defined as an online platform that publishes user-generated content — would be required to remove deepfaked images that violate the TAKE IT DOWN Act on request.
Florida Rep. Gus Bilirakis (Republican) told the House a school teacher in his district had used deepfakes to generate sexual images of students using their yearbook photos.
"Under current laws, only the use of the actual photos is illegal,” Bilirakis said. “The use of the AI to generate sexually explicit content is not.”
Both Hawai‘i representatives Ed Case (who represents Honolulu) and Jill Tokuda (who represents the rest of the state) voted in support of the bill, as did all other House Democrats save for 11 who didn’t vote.
Two House Republicans — Missouri’s Eric Burlison and Kentucky’s Thomas Massie — voted against the measure, and 11 other Republicans did not vote, but the remaining 207 GOP reps voted in favor of the bill.
Having already passed the Senate in February, the bill now goes to the President’s desk.
Batteries
Meanwhile, the House also voted on H. R. 973, establishing certain consumer standards for lithium-ion batteries.
In particular, the bill would require maufacturers of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries in personal light vehicles such as ebikes to comply with standards jointly set by the American National Standards Institute and other organizations.
As with the TAKE IT DOWN Act, all House Democrats — including Case and Tokuda — voted in favor of the bill, minus the 11 who did not vote. On the other side of the aisle, 42 Republicans voted against it, and 14 didn’t vote, while the remaining 163 voted in favor. The final vote was 365-42. It will next go to the Senate for further deliberation.
