Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I rise to speak in support of S. 146, the TAKE IT DOWN Act. The legislation addresses the nonconsensual sharing of intimate images online, one of the most significant harms proliferating on the internet in recent years. Advances in generative artificial intelligence and other photo manipulation software have enabled the creation of digital forgeries that place victims in sexually explicit situations that never actually occurred but can still cause massive reputational and financial damage to those who were targeted. Some of the platforms hosting actual and computer-generated nonconsensual intimate images have promised to address such abuses online and protect their users but, nevertheless, victims report great difficulty in getting such images removed from the internet. They tell us they feel powerless as it spreads or even resurfaces years later. The TAKE IT DOWN Act will require social media and other online public platforms to provide a mechanism for people to notify the platform of nonconsensual intimate images in which they are depicted. It also requires the platforms to take reasonable steps to remove the images from their platforms within 48 hours. I thank Representatives Dean and Dingell for their leadership on this issue, and I encourage my colleagues to support this bipartisan legislation. I reserve the balance of my time, Mr. Speaker.”