Campbell, CA — Musician and activist Annie Lennox, along with music industry nonprofit Artist Rights Alliance, have joined a growing coalition calling upon lawmakers to take meaningful action to combat the ongoing deepfake explosion.

Ban Deepfakes is a diverse cohort of organizations and individuals calling for meaningful accountability and liability at every stage of the deepfake supply chain – including AI corporations. Supporters include preeminent figures such as author Steven Pinker and actor Ashley Judd, and members include the National Organization for Women, Equality Now, SAG-AFTRA, Plan International, Future of Life Institute, and more.

As founder of The Circle, an NGO dedicated to creating a safer and fairer world for marginalized women and girls globally, Lennox writes: “Deepfake technology has created a new, rapidly expanding frontier of sexual abuse, primarily against women and girls. Along with the creators and distributors of fake, nonconsensual explicit content, we need to hold the tech companies whose AI models enable this harm accountable.”

The Artist Rights Alliance recently launched an appeal for AI companies to protect musicians from the harms of their technology, which was signed by 200+ prominent artists including Billie Eilish, Chappell Roan, and Jon Bon Jovi. Executive Director Jen Jacobsen explained: “AI deepfake tools can cause tremendous damage to artists and their livelihoods when used unethically and irresponsibly. To stop this exploitation of the entire creative industry, we need lawmakers to step in and establish clear rules for all parties involved with the production and dissemination of nonconsensual and unlicensed AI images, audio, and video.”

There is overwhelming bipartisan support for US legislation prohibiting deepfakes, including 75% of the American public in favor of holding AI developers liable when their image-generating models are used for harm. As AI capabilities grow, the creation and distribution of life-shattering deepfakes is becoming increasingly fast, cheap, and easy. Lawmakers must act now.

Find out more about the Campaign to Ban Deepfakes and its partners at: bandeepfakes.org.

Note to Editors:

Founded in 2014, the Future of Life Institute is a leading nonprofit working to steer transformative technology towards benefiting humanity. FLI is best known for their 2023 open letter calling for a six-month pause on advanced AI development, endorsed by experts such as Yoshua Bengio and Stuart Russell, as well as their work on the Asilomar AI Principles and recent EU AI Act.

For more information, contact:
Maggie Munro, Communications Strategist | maggie@futureoflife.org