Paris Hilton has joined forces with U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to push for the passage of the DEFIANCE Act.
Hilton and Ocasio-Cortez held a press conference in Washington, D.C. on Thursday (Jan. 22) with lawmakers and survivors to advocate for the bipartisan bill that would allow for victims of sexualized deepfakes to sue those responsible for its creation and distribution.
"When I was 19 years old, a private, intimate video of me was shared with the world without my consent," Hilton said at the 17:10 mark in the video above. "People called it a scandal. It wasn't. It was abuse. There were no laws at the time to protect me. There weren’t even words for what had been done to me. The internet was still new, and so was the cruelty that came with it."
Prior to the press conference, AOC took to X to highlight the effectiveness of Hilton's advocacy efforts, while also thanking her for throwing support behind the Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits, or DEFIANCE Act.
Hilton later responded, thanking AOC for the "support and kind words."
Hilton claimed in her speech that one in eight girls experience the harms of deepfake porn, and expressed concern over how this "staggering" statistic could impact her personally.
"Too many women are afraid to exist online, or sometimes, to exist at all, and I know how that feels because I lived it," she said. "And now, I have a daughter who's just two-and-a-half years old, and I would go to the ends of the earth to protect her. But I can't protect her from this. Not yet. And that's why I'm here."
The DEFIANCE Act was unanimously passed in the Senate earlier this month, and now moves onto the House.
Hilton previously advocated for the Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act, which was signed into law in 2024.