Paris Hilton Speaks at Captiol Hall to Support DEFIANCE Act to Stop AI-Generated Explicit Deepfake Images
Paris Hilton is bravely opening up about her experience with a nude video leak as a teenager.
The 44-year-old media personality joined Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Capitol Hill on Thursday (January 22) in Washington, D.C.
They were there to advocate for the DEFIANCE Act (Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits Act), which seeks to stop the creation and spread of sexually explicit AI-generated deepfake images.
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“Coming back to the Capitol, I feel something new, strength,” Paris said during her speech (via People). “When I was 19 years old, a private, intimate video of me was shared with the world without my consent. People called it a scandal. It wasn’t. It was abuse. There were no laws at the time to protect me. There weren’t even words for what had been done to me. The internet was still new, and so was the cruelty that came with it.”
She continued, “They called me names. They laughed and made me the punchline. They sold my pain for clicks, and then they told me to be quiet, to move on, to even be grateful for the attention. These people didn’t see me as a young woman who had been exploited. They didn’t see the panic that I felt, the humiliation or the shame. No one asked me what I lost — I lost control over my body, over my reputation. My sense of safety and self-worth was stolen from me.”
Paris noted that she thought “the worst was behind me, but it wasn’t.”
“What happened to me then is happening now to millions of women and girls in a new and more terrifying way. Before, someone had to betray your trust and steal something real. Now all it takes is a computer and a stranger’s imagination. Deepfake pornography has become an epidemic,” she said.
Paris herself has been a victim of AI-generated deepfake images, with “over 100,000″ of them existing.
“Not one of them is real, not one of them is consensual. And each time a new one appears, that horrible feeling returns, that fear that someone somewhere is looking at it right now and thinking it’s real. No amount of money or lawyers can stop it or protect me from more. It’s the newest form of victimization happening at scale, to your daughters, your sisters, your friends and neighbors,” she said.
Days earlier, Paris was in Los Angeles with her family for the premiere of her new documentary.