AOC opens up about ‘shock’ of stumbling upon deepfake AI video of herself performing sex act
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has opened up about her own horrifying experience of becoming the victim of AI-generated deepfake porn — warning that it is “not as imaginary as people want to make it seem.”
The Queens Democrat said she was scrolling through X while talking about legislation with her aides in a car in February when she came face to face with the AI-generated image of herself performing a sex act.
“There’s a shock to seeing images of yourself that someone could think are real,” Ocasio-Cortez told Rolling Stone. “As a survivor of physical sexual assault, it adds a level of dysregulation. It resurfaces trauma, while I’m trying to … in the middle of a f–king meeting.”
The mental picture of her deepfake version placing her mouth over another’s genitals stayed with Ocasio-Cortez for the rest of the day.
“There are certain images that don’t leave a person, they can’t leave a person,” she confessed to the magazine, citing scientific research arguing that it is difficult for a human brain to separate distressing images glimpsed on a phone from reality, even if they are known to be fake.
“It’s not as imaginary as people want to make it seem,” Ocasio-Cortez continued. “It has real, real effects not just on the people that are victimized by it, but on the people who see it and consume it. And once you’ve seen it, you’ve seen it.”
The harm from “digitizing violent humiliation” is akin to physical rape, according to the congresswoman.
“Kids are going to kill themselves over this,” she warmed. “People are going to kill themselves over this.”
Ocasio-Cortez, 34, is spearheading a House version of the Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits (DEFIANCE) Act of 2024, which would make it easier for victims of nonconsensual AI porn to sue publishers, distributors and consumers of X-rated digital forgeries.
She introduced the bipartisan and bicameral bill in March, with Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D–IL), and Senators Lindsey Graham (R–SC), Amy Klobuchar (D–MN) and Josh Hawley (R–MO) throwing their support behind it.
“The deepfakes may not be real, but they cause very real harms,” Durbin stated. “It’s time to return power to the victims and give them a tool to demand justice from those responsible for these horrific images.”
Ocasio-Cortez identified the use of AI in the production of porn as a symptom of a much bigger problem plaguing society today.
“It’s a subjugation of entire people,” she argued. “When you are able to actively subjugate all women in society on a scale of millions, at once digitally, it’s a direct connection [with] taking their rights away.”
On a personal level, the lawmaker, who has repeatedly experienced online bullying — some of its featuring doctored photos — since being first elected in 2019, claimed the use of sexually explicit deepfakes with her likeness is yet another way for her foes to try to force her out of politics.
“And guess what, motherf–kers?” she said. “I’m not going anywhere. Deal with it.”
