Senator Durbin questions Google over sexually explicit deepfakes

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) sent a letter on Monday to Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, asking for details on how the platform plans to combat non-consensual, sexually explicit deepfakes.

With safety features disabled, Google search results for the word “deepfakes” and celebrity names often show links to such material, driving increased web traffic to websites where people can view and even purchase non-consensual, sexually explicit deepfakes. The Google Play app store also offers tools touting the ability to create such material, and YouTube (also owned and operated by Alphabet) hosts viral fake news videos that use deepfake technology.

Deepfakes are deceptive digital media generated or altered using artificial intelligence. One of the most common types of deepfakes involves “swapping” the faces of women and girls into pornographic content. The material often features celebrities but is increasingly being used to bully girls in middle and high schools around the world.

“Google Search directs users to apps that produce non-consensual, sexually explicit deepfakes and to platforms that host them. Google Play provides apps that create non-consensual, sexually explicit deepfakes. And YouTube provides tutorials on how to create non-consensual, sexually explicit deepfakes,” Durbin wrote in the letter, shared exclusively with NBC News. “While Alphabet has taken limited steps recently to address these issues, the company must move forward with its efforts more aggressively.”

Durbin is one of the senators spearheading national legislation against the growing threat of non-consensual, sexually explicit deepfakes. His Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits Act of 2024 (DEFIANCE Act) would give victims of deepfakes the ability to sue the creators and distributors of the material. Last week, Durbin asked for unanimous consent to pass the bill, but it faced an objection from Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wy).

In his letter to Pichai, Durbin cited data from independent researcher Genevieve Oh, who found that the number of sexually explicit deepfake videos uploaded without consent has increased “ninefold” since 2019, and the videos have been viewed nearly four billion times. The vast majority of these videos feature women with prominent, high-profile careers, Durbin’s letter said.

“The creation and distribution of non-consensual, sexually explicit deepfakes are acts of abuse and invasion of privacy that cause lasting harm to victims,” ​​Durbin wrote, further suggesting that Google’s practice of requiring deepfake victims to fill out opt-out forms for search results containing the material is inadequate. “Alphabet cannot simply shift the responsibility for controlling this material onto the harmed individuals.”

Durbin ended the letter with a request for information from Alphabet, with a June 28 deadline. In it, he asked, among other things, what steps Google is taking to remove URLs from search results that point to non-consensual, sexually explicit deepfakes and the apps used to create them, and how Google Play enforces its terms of service against apps used to create deepfakes.