Paris Hilton wants legislative reforms molded based on her personal experiences.
The Simple Life alum, 44, is once again at Capitol Hill, where she advocated for the Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits Act, or DEFIANCE Act, on January 22.
Hilton, whose efforts a year earlier successfully campaigned to pass a bill that enacted protections for institutionalised youth, has returned to Capitol Hill with a hope to make a change by sharing a personal and traumatic experience.
“Coming back to the Capitol, I feel something new, strength,” she began, standing alongside Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has played a leading role in championing the bill.
“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.”
“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,” Hilton continued.
“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.”
Recalling 2004, when Hilton’s s*x tape got leak with boyfriend Rick Salomon, the businesswoman noted that she has “fought hard to get those things back,” and she thought she had.
However, the AI advancement has made it much easier to generate any explicit content or image of anyone.
“I believed that the worst was behind me, but it wasn’t,” Hilton declared. “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.”
The DEFIANCE Act will give victims legal safety and allows to take action against those responsible for making and distributing pornographic deepfakes.
