96% of deepfakes are nonconsensual pornography targeting women, but only 23 US states have specific laws and federal enforcement remains near zero

Approximately 96% of all deepfake content online is nonconsensual pornography, and 99% of that targets women. Over 143,000 new AI-generated nonconsensual pornographic videos were posted online in 2023 alone -- a nearly 10x increase from 15,000 in 2019 -- and the barrier to creation has collapsed to requiring only a single photograph and freely available tools. Why it matters: Women and girls are targeted with fabricated intimate imagery without their consent, so victims experience severe psychological harm including anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation, so they face reputational damage in personal and professional contexts that is nearly impossible to remediate because synthetic content is indistinguishable from real imagery, so the chilling effect discourages women from maintaining public-facing careers or social media presence, so gender-based digital violence becomes normalized as a tool of harassment and coercion at scale. The structural root cause is that US law was designed around the concept of 'revenge porn' involving real images, and the legal framework has not caught up to synthetic media -- only 23 states have laws specifically addressing AI-generated nonconsensual intimate imagery, the federal TAKE IT DOWN Act only criminalizes distribution (not creation), and platforms like Telegram and smaller hosting services have no meaningful enforcement mechanisms or takedown compliance.