Committee hears bipartisan bills to criminalize and create civil remedies for nonconsensual intimate deepfakes

The Michigan House Judiciary Committee heard testimony in support of House Bills 4047 and 4048, bipartisan bills that would create civil causes of action and criminal penalties for the nonconsensual creation or distribution of intimate deepfake images and videos.

Representative Beierlein, a sponsor, told the committee that deepfakes are "manipulated audio visual content ... often indistinguishable from real recordings" and said the bills focus on intimate deepfakes that can be "irreversible" in harm. She described the package as providing "a means for affected individuals to seek civil justice" and giving law enforcement tools to hold perpetrators accountable.

Representative Sernigle (committee testimony recorded with variant spellings in the transcript) joined Beierlein in describing the bills as reintroductions of prior-year legislation that previously passed the House overwhelmingly. Representative Sernigle said the bills create both civil and criminal penalties for nonconsensual intimate deepfakes and summarized thresholds for civil liability, including that the deepfake reasonably depicts intimate parts, the depicted individual is identifiable, and the defendant acted with knowledge or reckless disregard regarding lack of consent.

Alana Beller of Public Citizen, testifying by video, briefed the committee on the rapid advance of AI-generated imagery and described studies finding that most deepfakes online are intimate and nonconsensual and that detection is increasingly difficult. "The quality is very good at this point," Beller told the committee, and she noted states across the country are enacting related laws.

Zoe Brewer of RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) said intimate deepfakes inflict "very real consequences" such as humiliation, lost employment or educational disruption and urged the committee to pass the legislation so victims have civil and criminal recourse.

Committee members asked whether technological diagnostics exist to identify deepfakes and whether state law would operate alongside federal efforts. Witnesses said courts would determine authenticity and described ongoing technical methods such as watermarking; they also said state laws would complement federal enforcement tools. Members asked about commercial markets and penalties for buyers; sponsors and witnesses said the bills aim to cover creators and disseminators and that drafting details on possession or buyer liability could be refined.

The committee heard support from several organizations that did not speak at the hearing, according to the record: Michigan Sheriffs Association (Matt Saxon), Michigan Association for Justice (Mitch Albers), Michigan Coalition to End Domestic and Sexual Violence (Heath Lowry), and the Michigan Domestic Violence Prevention and Treatment Board.

No vote on the bills was recorded at the hearing; the committee proceeded to other agenda items after testimony and questioning.

The bills as described in testimony would create civil remedies for economic and noneconomic damages and classify certain dissemination or creation of intimate deepfakes as misdemeanors or felonies depending on harm, intent to profit, repeat convictions or use of a platform to create/distribute the material. Sample penalties discussed in testimony included misdemeanor exposure up to one year in jail and a $3,000 fine and felony exposure up to three years and a $5,000 fine in aggravated circumstances.