President Trump will soon sign legislation to criminalize the distribution of explicit images and videos created with deceptive editing and artificial intelligence, something which has become more prevalent in recent years. The bill was due to be signed last year before Elon Musk objected to several parts of a government funding deal. 

The Take It Down Act, once signed, will establish new criminal and civil penalties for those who create altered pornographic images and videos of other people, whether it be through digital editing or by using artificial intelligence. 

Social media platforms will be required to take down the deepfake photos and videos within 48 hours of their original upload time. 

Individuals convicted of uploading deepfake pornography depicting adults will face up to two years in prison. Those uploading altered pornography of children face up to three years in prison. 

The Senate passed the bill by unanimous consent after Senator Cruz was contacted by a constituent whose daughter was a victim of such a scheme. 

The victim in question, Elliston Berry, became distressed in 2023 when she discovered that a classmate of hers had taken a photo from her Instagram account and put it through an A.I. platform to digitally alter the photo to remove her clothing. That altered photo was then sent to classmates. Ms. Berry was only 14 at the time of the event. 

First lady Melnia Trump became a champion for the legislation once she returned to the White House in January. On Monday, Mrs. Trump said the bill is key to protecting children online. 

“Advancing this legislation has been a key focus since I returned to my role as First Lady this past January.  I am honored to have contributed to guiding it through Congress. By safeguarding children from hurtful online behavior today, we take a vital step in nurturing our leaders of tomorrow,” the first lady said in a statement. 

Ms. Berry was invited to attend Mr. Trump’s joint address to Congress back in March. In a video shared by the White House, Ms. Berry said it was “such an amazing experience” to work with Mrs. Trump and Mr. Cruz to get the bill passed. 

“She has the heart for my situation and … she cares,” Ms. Berry said of the first lady. 

Back in 2023, George Washington University law professor Spencer Overton told members of the House Oversight Committee that deepfake, A.I.-generated pornography was a threat to women across the country. He also said that it was growing more popular by the day. 

“Deepfake pornography accounts for 98 percent of deepfake videos online, and 99 percent of all deepfake porn features women while only one percent features men,” Mr. Overton told lawmakers. “The total number of deepfake porn videos produced in 2023 increased 464 percent from 2022 — to 21,019 from 3,725 — and in 2023 the monthly traffic of the leading ten dedicated deepfake porn websites reached over 34 million.”

The legislation was killed in 2024 thanks to one of Mr. Trump’s own senior advisors, however. The Take It Down Act was included in a 1,500-page government funding deal just before Christmas last year, though Mr. Musk was quick to object to the bill because he felt the package itself simply had too many pages. Just hours after Mr. Musk called on the Republican-led House to scrap the funding deal, Mr. Trump and Vice President Vance came out against that legislation and made demands that the bill be pared down. 

Congressional leaders then made the decision to strip the Take It Down Act from their broader agreement so that the funding deal would have fewer pages, soothing Mr. Musk’s concerns. 

“Yesterday’s bill vs today’s bill,” Mr. Musk wrote on X, comparing the 1,500-page bill which included the anti-deepfake pornography legislation to the slimmer government funding deal that he helped design. 

“Ever seen a bigger piece of pork?” Mr. Musk asked in another post, including a photo of the printed legislation. 

Only two House members voted against the Take It Down Act. Congressman Thomas Massie, who voted no on Monday, said he thought the new criminal and civil penalties could be used beyond their original intent. 

“I feel this is a slippery slope, ripe for abuse, with unintended consequences,” Mr. Massie wrote on X.