AI Frontier Institute

CRIM CD-DEEPFAKE-HARASS

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Illinois HB5106, introduced in the 104th General Assembly by Rep. Maurice A. West II, amends the Criminal Code of 2012 (720 ILCS 5/26.5-0.1 and 720 ILCS 5/26.5-3) to expand the offense of harassment through electronic communications to include the transmission of deepfakes with intent to harass. The bill adds a definition of 'deepfake' in Section 26.5-0.1 as any image, audio, or video of an individual's appearance, conduct, or spoken words that has been created or manipulated using machine learning, natural language processing, or another computational processing technique to produce a realistic but false depiction—either appearing to a reasonable person to show a real individual doing or saying something that did not occur, or providing a fundamentally different understanding of the individual than an unaltered original would. Section 26.5-3 is amended to add subsection (a)(5.5), making it a criminal offense to transmit such a deepfake to any person with intent to harass. Existing provider liability protections remain unchanged: telecommunications carriers, mobile service providers, and internet/hosting service providers are not liable under the section except for willful and wanton misconduct.

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