The bill is targeting what’s known as “deepfakes.” Wednesday, Minnesota Senate lawmakers passed a bill almost unanimously that would criminalize people who non-consensually share deepfake sexual images of others without their consent as well as people using deepfakes to hurt a political candidate or sway an election.
“What you are watching might not be real. Which is really a scary thing to think about,” said Rochester Sen. Liz Boldon.
According to the Cambridge Dictionary, deepfakes are described as “a video or sound recording that replaces someone else’s face or voice with that of someone else, in a way that appears real.”
“You can put anybody’s face on anybody’s body and make it look like people are doing things that Sen. Boldon explained.
The author of the bill, Sen. Erin Mae Quade, says 96% of deepfakes on the internet are pornographic.
Experts say the scariest part is that it’s almost impossible to tell if the video is fake.
“The rate at which its advancing it outpaces our ability to regulate it which is also scary,” Sen. Boldon added.
