US Take It Down Act now requires fast removal of sexual deepfakes

In short: A US law called the Take It Down Act is now fully in force, and it requires online platforms to remove nonconsensual intimate images within 48 hours.

What happened

The Take It Down Act took effect on May 19, 2026. It targets nonconsensual intimate imagery, meaning sexual images shared without the person’s permission. This includes both real images and sexual “deepfakes” (fake images or videos made to look real, like a convincing digital impersonation).

The law already made it a crime to distribute this kind of content when it was signed in May 2025 by President Donald Trump. The new part now in force is the removal rule. Online services must take down reported content within 48 hours or face fines.

The Federal Trade Commission, the agency that enforces the law, sent letters to more than a dozen companies ahead of the deadline. The FTC said the list included Amazon, Alphabet (Google’s parent company), Apple, Meta, Microsoft, TikTok, Snap, Reddit, X, and others. The FTC warned that penalties could exceed $53,000 per violation, and it told platforms to remove “known identical copies” too, meaning reposts that match the same image.

Why it matters

For regular people, the promise is simple: it should be faster to get humiliating sexual images taken down. But some experts warned The Verge that the process could be misused, and that it might not help victims as much as it sounds. A fast takedown rule can act like a powerful delete button, and critics worry it could also be used to pressure platforms to remove lawful content.

Source: The Verge AI