U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) on July 11 proposed a bipartisan bill designed to combat the rise of deepfakes, which are manipulated media that use machine learning — a branch of artificial intelligence (AI) and computer science — to create realistic images or videos of people doing or saying things they never actually did or said.
“Artificial intelligence has given bad actors the ability to create deepfakes of every individual, including those in the creative community, to imitate their likeness without their consent and profit off of counterfeit content,” said Sen. Blackburn, the lead original cosponsor of the Content Origin Protection and Integrity from Edited and Deepfaked Media (COPIED) Act of 2024, S. 4674.
Sponsored by U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA), S. 4674 would set new federal transparency guidelines for marking, authenticating, and detecting AI-generated content, according to a bill summary provided by the lawmakers; would protect journalists, actors, and artists from AI-driven theft; and would hold violators accountable for abuses, the summary says.
“The COPIED Act takes an important step to better defend common targets like artists and performers against deepfakes and other inauthentic content,” Sen. Blackburn said.
Specifically, S. 4674 would require the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to develop guidelines and standards for content provenance information, watermarking, and synthetic content detection, according to the bill’s text.
Such standards would promote transparency to identify whether content has been generated or manipulated by AI, as well as where AI content originated. The bill also would direct NIST to develop cybersecurity measures to prevent tampering with provenance and watermarking on AI content, among several other provisions.
For example, S. 4674 would require providers of AI tools used to generate creative or journalistic content to allow owners of that content to attach provenance information to it and would prohibit the removal of such information, while also prohibiting the unauthorized use of content with provenance information to train AI models or generate AI content, according to the text.
The COPIED Act has garnered support from numerous entities, including SAG-AFTRA, the Recording Academy, the National Music Publishers’ Association, the National Newspaper Association, the National Association of Broadcasters, and the Songwriters Guild of America, among many others.
“The bipartisan COPIED Act… will provide much-needed transparency around AI-generated content,” said Sen. Cantwell. “The COPIED Act will also put creators, including local journalists, artists and musicians, back in control of their content with a provenance and watermark process that I think is very much needed.”