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Elliston Berry, then 14 years old, woke up on the morning of October 2, 2023 in her hometown of Aledo, Texas, to frantic texts from a friend. Innocent photos of Berry and two of her friends from their social media accounts had been edited using artificial intelligence to make them appear nude.

Within a day, edited photos of a total of nine girls at her Aledo high school were being shared around the school.

Berry and her mother, Anna McAdams, turned this incident into advocacy for a measure signed into law on Monday by President Donald Trump to protect future victims of AI-generated intimate images and non-consensual posting of intimate images.

The bipartisan law, led by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and labeled the Take It Down Act, tackles the distribution of revenge pornography and deepfakes — digitally altered images — shared without consent.

“It represents movement, it represents justice, and it represents that even a normal person, just a normal person from Texas, has a voice,” Berry, now 16, said in an interview with The Texas Tribune.

The law makes non-consensual posting or threats to post real, fake or altered “intimate visual depictions” online a federal crime. Posting such depictions could lead to fines and sentences of up to two years for posting depictions of adults and up to three years in prison for posting images of minors.

The law also requires that within the next year online platforms make a system where victims or people on their behalf can report such images. Once reported, the platforms must remove the images within 48 hours.

“It should not take a sitting U.S. senator making a phone call on your behalf to get pictures like that taken down,” Cruz said in an interview. “Any victim should have a right to say that is me, you do not have my permission, take it down.”

In Berry’s case, a fellow high school student made Snapchat accounts, requested to follow other students at the school, and, if a connection was accepted, sent the false depictions of Berry and her friends.

“As a parent, you prepare to protect your child. We never saw this coming,” McAdams said. “It was so devastating.”

The school was able to identify the student within a week, McAdams said, but they did not tell girls or their families who was responsible because the perpetrator was a minor.

In December 2023, McAdams began reaching out to the offices of state representatives and Sen. Ted Cruz. Texas state Senator Phil King, R-Weatherford, contacted the family, and has worked with them on state legislation around deepfake regulation.

King’s bill is being considered by the state Legislature, which is separately considering a bill to ban minors from social media.

In April 2024, Cruz’s office responded to McAdams and later flew her to Washington to talk with the Senator about a possible bill regarding AI deepfake regulation. Berry later joined her to promote the legislation on Capitol Hill and to media outlets in Washington and New York.

“Elliston was the impetus for this bill, but sadly, we are seeing women and teenage girls being targeted over and over again,” Cruz said.

Many states have laws banning revenge pornography — nude images shared without consent of the person pictured — but many of these laws don’t address AI falsified images.

This law aims at that gap and places a duty on social media companies to regulate the content of their platforms and remove harmful content when notified.

The Snapchat accounts that targeted Berry weren’t taken down, Cruz and McAdams said, until after the family met with Cruz and he directed staff to contact the company – months after McAdams and the other victim’s families first attempted to contact the platform.

“This makes sure that they have to respond,” McAdams said.

At first, McAdams said that Berry wasn’t sure about speaking out about what had happened to her. But after her first speaking event at a news conference introducing the legislation, Berry turned to her mother and said “Mom, I can do this,” McAdams recalled.

“He really gave Elliston her voice back,” McAdams said about Cruz. “It really has been a healing process for her.”

Berry appeared on major networks over the past year advocating for the bill, appeared with First Lady Melania Trump and Cruz at a Capitol Hill roundtable ahead of Trump’s joint address to Congress, and attended the address as one of the first lady’s official guests.

The first lady has been an outspoken advocate for the act as a part of her “Be Best” anti-cyber bullying initiative.

The bill passed the Senate unanimously in February and the House of Representatives, with only two opposing votes, at the end of April. Major companies — including Meta, Google, TikTok, and Snap (the company that owns Snapchat) — endorsed the legislation.

The two lawmakers who voted against the bill were Republican Reps. Thomas Massie, Kentucky, and Eric Burlison, Missouri, who both argued the bill could lead to censorship. Massie wrote that the law could be a “slippery slope,” and “ripe for abuse,” on X.

Some advocacy groups have criticized the bill for vagueness and have worried that the law does not allow enough time for platforms to properly go through removal requests, potentially leading to legal content being taken down.

Cruz dismissed free speech concerns and said that the bill does not remotely revolve around free speech, adding “You can say anything you like, but you don’t have a right to harm the rights of others.”

Berry and her mom were both in the White House Rose Garden during the Monday bill signing where the president and first lady highlighted Berry’s advocacy.

“Elliston Berry stood boldly for change, despite the risk posed to her and her family,” Melania Trump said. “By speaking out and making her voice heard Elliston, your voice and the voices of so many like you, made this bill a national priority.”

Now, Berry and McAdams are focusing on their next policy push: adding lessons about AI into high school curriculums.

The pair said they want to add instructions on what AI crime is, what deepfakes are, and what can be done to support victims. This work for AI education they hope will be done on a nationwide level, but Berry and McAdams have started to advocate for this on the state and school-district level.

Aledo Independent School District, the district Berry attended during the incident, said in a statement that the district “fully supports changes in federal and state law that would better address uses of AI that harm children and supports parent and student education about the dangers of AI.”

While in Washington, McAdams said she is hoping to meet with administration officials about getting this curriculum implemented nationwide.

Berry said she believes if her school had this kind of education, that her photos never would have been edited and if they were, her school and herself would have been more prepared.

“School is supposed to be our safe place,” Berry said. “It’s where we go to learn, get our education. Yet, there’s so many cases around the world that people are not even wanting to go to class because they’re being tormented on social media.”

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