Artificial intelligence is not good nor evil, in and of itself. It is a digital tool that can be employed to perform tasks more efficiently, consistently and usefully. One example is in a recent Dallas Morning News editorial I read about published research on an AI tool to reroute around power outages in milliseconds, saving the grid from potentially worse upscaling problems. [Behind a paywall, but still readable here if you know how.] Employing that could save many lives and prevent grid failures. I use output generated by machine-learning algorithms (part of AI) as one tool — not a crutch, since human understanding matters! — among many for storm forecasts.

Yet we hear a lot from both scaremongers and legit news outlets about the potential use of AI for nefarious ends, as by the red Commie Chinese against their own citizens, or by hackers (some sponsored by the likes of China, Russia or DPRK) to damage insecure networks, agencies and infrastructure. Those evil uses are illegal (since damaging hacking already is). In other areas, however, law has yet to catch up to tech.

One is the abuse of AI imaging algorithms to place innocent faces in inappropriate or illegal situations, such as “deepfake porn” and “revenge porn”. Posting of real, unauthorized nudes of people is a problem too. This is all digital sexual abuse, and is becoming increasingly common against mainly women and girls. As such imagery easily crosses state lines electronically, this clearly falls under Constitutional federal authority, though some individual states have started on this problem as well.

Here is where the typical do-nothings of Congress actually can be useful, and some have. Ted Cruz and a bipartisan team of Senators have introduced a bill called the TAKE IT DOWN Act to make illegal both deepfake/AI porn and unauthorized real sexual images of innocent people, as well as threats to make such material. While it can’t eliminate the evil totally (say, international bad actors out of U.S. extradition reach), it’s worth becoming law to discourage its creation, use and hosting domestically. I strongly support this, and so should your Congresscritters. Make sure they do.