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Good practice Imported

TAKE IT DOWN Act — U.S. Federal Law Against Non-Consensual Intimate Images and AI Deepfakes

United States of America · Washington, D.C. · See the United States of America profile · See the Washington, D.C. profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 68% 52/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Signed in May 2025, the U.S. TAKE IT DOWN Act criminalises publishing non-consensual intimate images, including AI deepfakes, and forces platforms to remove reported content within 48 hours. FTC enforcement, with warnings to 15 major platforms, began May 2026.

15
Major platforms sent FTC warning letters (May 2026)
53,088 USD
Civil penalty per violation for non-compliant platforms

Details

Maturity
Pilot
Promoter
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) / U.S. Congress
Period
2025–present
Keywords
gender-based violence, digital safety, criminal justice, online platform regulation

Context

The TAKE IT DOWN Act (S.146) is a bipartisan U.S. federal law responding to the rapid rise of non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII), including AI-generated deepfakes, disproportionately used to target women and girls. It was passed by Congress in April 2025 and signed into law on 19 May 2025.

Activities

The Act makes it a federal crime to knowingly publish an intimate image of an identifiable person without consent, whether real or digitally fabricated, and requires 'covered platforms' to create a notice-and-removal process: on a compliant victim request, a platform must take down the image and known identical copies within 48 hours.

Results

The criminal provision took effect immediately; platforms were given until 19 May 2026 to stand up removal processes. The FTC began enforcement in May 2026 by sending warning letters to fifteen major platforms and launching a dedicated victim complaint portal, TakeItDown.ftc.gov.

Conclusions

Because the platform-compliance deadline only passed in May 2026, there is not yet published data on how many images have been removed or how quickly, and legal commentators have flagged open questions about the 'digital forgery' definition's breadth and the difficulty of pursuing anonymous or foreign-based perpetrators.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Low (< €50k) — Compliance costs borne by covered platforms; FTC enforcement absorbed within existing budget.
Time to results
Short (< 1 year) — Signed 19 May 2025; platform-compliance deadline 19 May 2026; enforcement began May 2026.
Staffing & skills
Federal Trade Commission enforcement staff, covered platforms' trust-and-safety teams

Conditions for success

  • a fixed 48-hour takedown obligation with a defined compliance deadline
  • a dedicated victim complaint portal
  • bipartisan federal criminal provision effective immediately

Common failure modes

  • no removal data yet published
  • open questions about the 'digital forgery' definition and pursuing anonymous or foreign-based perpetrators

Where it fits

Governance type
national federal law + regulator enforcement
Scale
national
Income level
high income

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

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