Melania Trump celebrated a major victory on Monday as she added her signature to the new revenge porn ban that she helped push through Congress.
The Take It Down Act makes it a federal crime to share intimate photos of someone without their consent, including digitally fabricated images, known as "deep fakes."
While her husband's signature made it law, Melania was invited by President Trump to sign the Take It Down Act in recognition of her efforts to get it passed.
“C’mon, sign it anyway,” the president told his wife. “She deserves to sign it,” he said.
The ban was a priority for Melania, who made it part of her campaign against online bullying and intimidation, #BeBest.
In March, Melania made a rare trip to the Capitol to lobby for the ban alongside revenge porn victims.
"It's heartbreaking to witness young teens, especially girls, grappling with the overwhelming challenges posed by malicious online content, like deepfakes," she said at the time.
She hailed the law as a "national victory" at the signing ceremony, where she spoke about the addictive harms of social media and AI and the potential for these tools to be "weaponized" against innocent women and children.
“This legislation is a powerful step forward in our efforts to ensure that every American, especially young people, can feel better protected from their image or identity being abused through nonconsensual intimate imagery (NCII),” she said.
“AI and social media are the digital candy for the next generation, sweet addictive and engineered to have an impact on the cognitive development of our children,” she said.
"But unlike sugar, these new technologies can be weaponized, shape beliefs and, sadly, affect emotions and even be deadly.”
The Take It Down Act passed Congress overwhelmingly, with every Senator voting yes and only two Republicans in the House voting no.
The law's few critics say it could open the door to censorship. But supporters argue the new regulations are needed in a fast-changing era of AI technology that has given powerful new tools to abusers and blackmailers.
As President Trump noted, "With the rise of AI image generation, countless women have been harassed with deep fakes and other explicit images distributed against their will. This is wrong and it’s just so horribly wrong. And it’s a very abusive situation, like in some cases people have never seen before, and today we’re making it totally illegal."
