Latest news with #EllistonBerry
CBS News
25-05-2025
- Politics
- CBS News
New federal law that cracks down on deepfake revenge porn images inspired by North Texas teen
A North Texas teenager and her mother who pushed for a new law to crackdown on revenge porn and deepfake images celebrated during a bill signing ceremony at the White House last Monday. Elliston Berry, 16, and her mother Anna McAdams of Aledo, stood next to President Trump, First Lady Melania Trump, and U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas who led the bipartisan effort to pass the bill along with U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar, D-Minnesota. In an interview for Eye On Politics Berry said, "Being able to stand up there with the President and First Lady having them sign this bill that is really protecting people is so rewarding, especially because my mom and I spent the last year and a half fighting and getting in contact with people in order to have some sort of security and protection implemented." McAdams agreed. "It was just a full circle moment for both of us I think, realizing that our voices were heard and now we have protections in place. We never believed that that could ever happen and here we are. It was bigger than we ever imagined it to be. We felt so blessed to be there with the President and First Lady." The Take It Down Act makes it a federal crime to post and threaten to post real or fake intimate images without a person's consent. Social media platforms will also have to remove these images within 48 hours of being requested to do so. This crack down came after Berry became a victim when a fellow classmate at Aledo High School placed the fake images of her and other girls online, where they remained for nine months. With the help of Senator Cruz, those images were pulled down. Watch Eye On Politics at 7:30 Sunday morning on CBS News Texas on air and streaming Follow Jack on X: @cbs11jack
The Herald Scotland
20-05-2025
- Politics
- The Herald Scotland
Trump bans nonconsensual, sexual images, first lady co-signs document
He then turned to the first lady, seated next to him at the outdoor desk set up to sign the legislation, asking her if she wanted to sign her name on the document. She promptly autographed the leather-bound piece of paper. Addressing the audience made up of victims of revenge porn, members of Congress and Cabinet secretaries, the first lady called the new law a "national victory." "Artificial intelligence and social media are the digital candy for the next generation, sweet, addictive, and engineered to have an impact on the connectivity development of our children," she said. "But unlike sugar, these new technologies can be weaponized to shape beliefs and, sadly, affect emotions and even be deadly." In particular, she thanked Elliston Berry for speaking up and advocating on behalf of survivors after being targeted with revenge porn. Berry was 14 when a classmate used an AI app to attach a nude body to an Instagram photo of her face, before circulating it on social media. The new law will require technology platforms to remove reported "nonconsensual, sexually exploitative images" within 48 hours of receiving a valid request. Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minnesota, introduced the legislation in August. Berry has said that when she reported the incident to her school in north Texas, the authorities responded saying it was out of their control. It was only after Cruz's Senate office heard her story and reached out to Snapchat that her photos were removed. "It's a very abusive situation," said the president. "And today we're making it totally illegal." Remarking on the wide support in Congress for the bill, with 99 senators and 408 members of the House of Representatives who voted in favor of the bill, the president joked, "I wish we could get that vote from other things." During her husband's first term, Melania Trump advocated against cyberbullying with her "Be Best" campaign. Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy is a White House Correspondent for USA TODAY. You can follow her on X @SwapnaVenugopal
Daily Mail
03-05-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
How school girl's brave act after ultimate humiliation set in motion Trump crackdown on vile school yard crime
When a teenage boy made fake nude photos of a group of girls at his school and posted them online in October 2023, the school claimed there was little they could do. Some of the victims at Aledo High School in Texas were so humiliated by the crime, and by the lack of action, they transferred to other schools. But one of the group, Elliston Berry, just 14 at the time, wasn't prepared to take what had happened to her sitting down. She enlisted the help of US senator Ted Cruz to force social media companies to take down the images after they initially refused. The women didn't even know who was behind the vile attack until Berry filed a Title IX investigation, which is the formal process used to make sex, harassment, or violence claims against their schools. Berry's brave actions two years ago - she is now 16 - will see her stand next to Donald Trump at the White House as he signs the first federal law in the coming weeks punishing those who use AI to make deepfake pornography. The landmark 'Take it Down Act' will make it a crime punishable by jail terms of up to three years and fines determined by the court for those those who create naked photos release them without consent. The law also requires social media companies to take down 'deepfake' images within 48 hours. 'When this first happened, everyone was kind of at a loss, especially when we brought it to the school board,' Berry, who is still at Aledo High School, told 'No one really knew what to do. No one had really heard of this issue. That's why it's so important the "Take it Down Act" has finally passed, because we finally have that backboard and handbook to help others.' Berry has also been invited to Capitol Hill twice by First Lady Melania Trump to garner support and awareness of the 'Take it Down' Act. She will never forget the moment she realized innocent photos she'd posted to Instagram had been transformed into fake nudes of her at just 14 years old. 'When I saw it, I thought, 'That looks completely real. This is not my body, and it looks so real,' the sophomore explained. 'It really was shocking how someone was able my clothes off completely, all using AI, and completely manipulated the entire photo.' She had no idea who'd created the images. Then similar fakes of her friends were shared online. 'It happened to my entire friend group. So day by day, he posted more of my friends, and ultimately, just exploited by whole friend group,' she said. When she appealed to the school to find out who had done this to her, they refused to tell her, citing his privacy. 'They didn't know what to do, so we were stuck trying to fight for ourselves. We filed a Title IX investigation, which ultimately lead to us knowing the identity of the person.' Months after she was first targeted, Berry learned a classmate she has known since 8th grade and once gifted her a Bible was behind the AI-generated photos. Berry shared her story while lobbying with the First Lady for a bill that would make it a federal crime to post revenge porn and deep fakes online 'Honestly, we were friends,' Berry said. 'He had given me a Bible and we had conversations about the Lord and things like that, so when this first happened, I was shocked he would even think of me in a sexual way.' The boy was placed in-school suspension, Berry said, before he transferred to another campus. 'None of us ever got an apology. We never learned why he did it. We still have no idea.' Berry and her friends were the unfortunate victims of a vile new crime that is spreading through schools like an out-of-control wild fire. She's been contacted by students from across the Lone Star State, sharing their own experiences with AI deepfake porn. 'It's honestly been really healing to be able to help others and honestly try my best to prevent this from happening to anyone else,' she said. 'I can take what he did and I can make it into something good.'
Yahoo
29-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The First Major US Law to Fight AI Harms and Deepfake Abuse
From left, Francesca Mani, Elliston Berry, first lady Melania Trump, and Senator Ted Cruz lobby for the Take It Down Act in Washington in March 2025. Credit - Kayla Bartkowski—Getty Images On April 28, the House of Representatives passed the first major law tackling AI-induced harm: the Take It Down Act. The bipartisan bill, which also passed the Senate and which President Trump is expected to sign, criminalizes non-consensual deepfake porn and requires platforms to take down such material within 48 hours of being served notice. The bill aims to stop the scourge of AI-created illicit imagery that has exploded in the last few years along with the rapid improvement of AI tools. While some civil society groups have raised concerns about the bill, it has received wide support from leaders on both sides of the aisle, from the conservative think tank American Principles Project to the progressive nonprofit Public Citizen. It passed both chambers easily, clearing the House with an overwhelming 409-2 vote. To some advocates, the bill is a textbook example of how Congress should work: of lawmakers fielding concerns from impacted constituents, then coming together in an attempt to reduce further harm. "This victory belongs first and foremost to the heroic survivors who shared their stories and the advocates who never gave up," Senator Ted Cruz, who spearheaded the bill in the Senate, wrote in a statement to TIME. "By requiring social media companies to take down this abusive content quickly, we are sparing victims from repeated trauma and holding predators accountable." Here's what the bill aims to achieve, and how it crossed many hurdles en route to becoming law. The Take It Down Act was borne out of the suffering—and then activism—of a handful of teenagers. In October 2023, 14-year-old Elliston Berry of Texas and 15-year-old Francesca Mani of New Jersey each learned that classmates had used AI software to fabricate nude images of them and female classmates. The tools that had been used to humiliate them were relatively new: products of the generative AI boom in which virtually any image could be created with the click of a button. Pornographic and sometimes violent deepfake images of Taylor Swift and others soon spread across the internet. When Berry and Mani each sought to remove the images and seek punishment for those that had created them, they found that both social media platforms and their school boards reacted with silence or indifference. 'They just didn't know what to do: they were like, this is all new territory,' says Berry's mother, Anna Berry. Anna Berry then reached out to Senator Ted Cruz's office, which took up the cause and drafted legislation that became the Take It Down Act. Cruz, who has two teenage daughters, threw his political muscle behind the bill, including organizing a Senate field hearing with testimony from both Elliston Berry and Mani in Texas. Mani, who had spoken out about her experiences in New Jersey before connecting with Cruz's office during its national push for legislation, says that Cruz spoke with her several times directly—and personally put in a call to a Snapchat executive asking them to remove her deepfakes from the platform. Mani and Berry both spent hours talking with congressional offices and news outlets to spread awareness. Bipartisan support soon spread, including the sign-on of Democratic co-sponsors like Amy Klobuchar and Richard Blumenthal. Representatives Maria Salazar and Madeleine Dean led the House version of the bill. Read More: Time 100 AI 2024: Francesca Mani Very few lawmakers disagreed with implementing protections around AI-created deepfake nudes. But translating that into law proved much harder, especially in a divided, contentious Congress. In December, lawmakers tried to slip the Take It Down Act into a bipartisan spending deal. But the larger deal was killed after Elon Musk and Donald Trump urged lawmakers to reject it. In the Biden era, it seemed that the piece of deepfake legislation that stood the best chance of passing was the DEFIANCE Act, led by Democrats Dick Durbin and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In January, however, Cruz was promoted to become the chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, giving him a major position of power to set agendas. His office rallied the support for Take it Down from a slew of different public interest groups. They also helped persuade tech companies to support the bill, which worked: Snapchat and Meta got behind it. 'Cruz put an unbelievable amount of muscle into this bill,' says Sunny Gandhi, vice president of political affairs at Encode, an AI-focused advocacy group that supported the bill. 'They spent a lot of effort wrangling a lot of the companies to make sure that they wouldn't be opposed, and getting leadership interested.' Gandhi says that one of the key reasons why tech companies supported the bill was because it did not involve Section 230 of the Communications Act, an endlessly-debated law that protects platforms from civil liability for what is posted on them. The Take It Down Act, instead, draws its enforcement power from the 'deceptive and unfair trade practices' mandate of the Federal Trade Commission. 'With anything involving Section 230, there's a worry on the tech company side that you are slowly going to chip away at their protections,' Gandhi says. 'Going through the FTC instead was a very novel approach that I think a lot of companies were okay with.' The Senate version of the Take It Down Act passed unanimously in February. A few weeks later, Melania Trump threw her weight behind the bill, staging a press conference in D.C., with Berry, Mani, and other deepfake victims, marking Trump's first solo public appearance since she resumed the role of First Lady. The campaign fit in with her main initiative from the first Trump administration: 'Be Best,' which included a focus on online safety. A Cruz spokesperson told TIME that Trump's support was crucial towards the bill getting expedited in the House. 'The biggest challenge with a lot of these bills is trying to secure priority and floor time,' they said. 'It's essential to have a push to focus priorities—and it happened quickly because of her.' "Today's bipartisan passage of the Take It Down Act is a powerful statement that we stand united in protecting the dignity, privacy, and safety of our children," Melania Trump said Monday. "I am thankful to the Members of Congress — both in the House and Senate — who voted to protect the well-being of our youth." While the bill passed both chambers easily and with bipartisan support, it weathered plenty of criticism on the way. Critics say that the bill is sloppily written, and that bad faith actors could flag almost anything as nonconsensual illicit imagery in order to get it scrubbed from the internet. They also say that Donald Trump could use it as a weapon, leaning on his power over the FTC to threaten critics. In February, 12 organizations including the Center for Democracy & Technology penned a letter to the Senate warning that the bill could lead to the 'suppression of lawful speech.' Critics question the bill's effectiveness especially because it puts the FTC in charge of enforcement—and the federal agency has been severely weakened by the Trump administration. At a House markup in April, Democrats warned that a weakened FTC could struggle to keep up with take-down requests, rendering the bill toothless. Regardless, Gandhi hopes that Congress will build upon Take It Down to create more safeguards for children online. The House Energy and Commerce Committee recently held a hearing on the subject, signaling increased interest. 'There's a giant movement in Congress and at the state level around kids' safety that is only picking up momentum,' Gandhi says. 'People don't want this to be the next big harm that we wait five or 10 years before we do something about it.' For Mani and Berry, the passage of Take It Down represents a major political, legal, and emotional victory. 'For those of us who've been hurt, it's a chance to take back our dignity,' Mani says. Contact us at letters@
Yahoo
01-04-2025
- Yahoo
RAINN Marks Beginning of Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month (SAAPM) 2025 With #TakeBackOurTech Campaign
Washington, D.C., April 01, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today RAINN, the nation's largest anti-sexual violence organization, marks the beginning of Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month (SAAPM), and we're shining the spotlight on the emerging realities, mental health impacts, and possible solutions to tech-enabled sexual abuse. A rapidly growing form of sexual violence, tech-enabled sexual abuse includes non-consensual intimate images shared online like 'deepfakes' created with AI technology or child sexual abuse material (CSAM) posted to websites and social media accounts. 'With every advancement in technology, there are those who will abuse it to harm others, and that is exactly what we're seeing with tech-enabled sexual abuse,' said Jennifer Simmons Kaleba, vice president of communications for RAINN. 'While many things stand out about this kind of sexual abuse—the fact that anyone from a celebrity to a classmate can be a victim, or that internet platforms aren't required to do anything about it when it's reported—the ease with which someone can cause so much havoc and harm is possibly the most shocking.' Take the case of Elliston Berry in Texas, who was 14 when an image-swapping app was used to turn an innocuous photo of her into a nude image and then shared with her classmate. RAINN has worked with lawmakers to create legislation that would give survivors like Berry a tool to not only make this act a crime, but hold tech platforms accountable to take down the material within 48-hours of reporting. Take it Down has passed the Senate unanimously and RAINN and advocate partners are calling for its full passage. 'We've worked with fierce determination for the past year to bring this bill forward because we know—and survivors know—that AI-assisted sexual abuse is sexual abuse and real harm is being done; real pain is caused,' said Stefan Turkheimer, RAINN vice president of public policy. This SAAPM, RAINN is calling on supporters to help 'take back our tech.' Tech-enabled sexual abuse is a violation of your rights, dignity, and safety. It robs individuals of control over their image, voice, and personal boundaries. Together, we can fight tech-enabled sexual abuse and build a safer world for everyone. Learn more at ### About RAINN RAINN, the nation's largest anti-sexual violence organization, created and operates the National Sexual Assault Hotline. RAINN also carries out programs to prevent sexual violence, help survivors, help organizations improve their sexual assault prevention and response programs, and ensure that perpetrators are brought to justice. If you or someone you know has experienced sexual violence, free, confidential help is available 24/7 by calling (4673) or visiting CONTACT: Erinn Robinon Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN) 8133351418 Media@ in to access your portfolio
