William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice
Abstract
This Note evaluates the various legal remedies available to victims of non-consensual deepfake pornography. As deepfakes are a relatively new but rapidly advancing technology, it is difficult for the law to keep up with the mass creation and distribution of AI-generated images on the Internet. With the competing interest of constitutionally protected speech, current deepfake laws fail to address non-consensual intimate image sharing (NCII) explicitly and lack the necessary deterrent effect to curb their proliferation. With an initial background on deepfakes and machine learning, this Note then explores the strained relationship between the First Amendment and the available civil remedies for deepfake victims, like defamation, IIED, and copyright claims. With many victims of deepfake pornography being women, the note then considers the utilization of the revenge porn provision within the 2022 Reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). By concluding with an overview of state and federal deepfake laws that criminalize the creation and distribution of non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII), state legislatures are ultimately leading the movement toward widespread recognition, criminalization, and removal of deepfake pornography.
Repository Citation
Elizabeth A. Safaryn, The Deepfake Dilemma: Fake Images, Real Victims, and the Legal Void in Addressing Non-Consensual Deepfake Pornography, 32 Wm. & Mary J. Race, Gender, & Soc. Just. 281 (2026), https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmjowl/vol32/iss2/5Included in
First Amendment Commons, Law and Gender Commons, Privacy Law Commons, Science and Technology Law Commons, Torts Commons