Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar took to the pages of The New York Times on Wednesday to push her crusade against parody under the guise of protecting all of us from deceptive practices. The example she used may eventually be seen to be suboptimal for the task she intended.
There’s a centuries-old expression that “a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.” Today, a realistic deepfake — an A.I.-generated video that shows someone doing or saying something they never did — can circle the globe and land in the phones of millions while the truth is still stuck on a landline. That’s why it is urgent for Congress to immediately pass laws to protect Americans by preventing their likenesses from being used to do harm. I learned that lesson in a visceral way over the last month when a fake video of me — opining on, of all things, the actress Sydney Sweeney’s jeans — went viral.
A month ago, actress and social media influencer Sidney Sweeney did a sorta retro and rather clever ad for American Eagle, pitching their jeans.
It was remarkable for several reasons. First and foremost, it was a major national brand going back to a classically beautiful, young, heterosexual woman to sell a product. This strategy had worked for several decades and only fell out of favor over the last 15-20 years, as ad agencies looked for the most bizarre examples of humanity with the most fantastic range of dysfunctions as models and spokescreatures. In stores such as Walmart, even the mannequins reflected this zeitgeist by having brightly colored hair and requiring a forklift to move them from place to place.
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The move was not without controversy. The ad was deemed racist and promoting eugenics because everyone knows that "jeans" is a codeword for "genes."
.@ClayTravis: "Sydney Sweeney is now doing ads for American Eagle that are sexy in nature and the fat, nose-ringed, pink haired contingent is angry." pic.twitter.com/bLYmLnXwhI
— The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show (@clayandbuck) July 28, 2025
So what was Klobuchar complaining about? This video uses AI-generated video and audio to imitate a typical Karen-ing speech by Klobuchar perfectly.
WARNING! If you are easily offended, don't listen to this.
OK, WHO DID THIS???🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/r3hqUqGdDU
— il Donaldo Trumpo (@PapiTrumpo) July 31, 2025
All we’re saying is that we want representation, okay. If Republicans are gonna have beautiful girls with perfect t*****s in their ads, we want ads for Democrats too, you know. We want ugly, fat b*****s wearing pink wigs and long-ass fake nails being loud and twerking on top of a cop car at a Waffle House because they didn’t get extra ketchup, you know? Just because we’re the party of ugly people doesn’t mean we can’t be featured in ads, okay? And I know most of us are too fat to wear jeans or too ugly to go outside, but we want representation.
Because I am a bad person, I nearly injured myself laughing. And because I'm sane, I knew Klobuchar didn't say this. Unlike me, Klobuchar was not amused.
As anyone would, I wanted the video taken down or at least labeled “digitally altered content.” It was using my likeness to stoke controversy where it did not exist. It had me saying vile things. And while I would like to think that most people would be able to recognize it as fake, some clearly thought it was real. Studies have shown that people who see this type of content develop lasting negative views of the person in the video, even when they know it is fake.
X refused to take it down or label it, even though its policy says users are prohibited from sharing “inauthentic content on X that may deceive people,” including “manipulated or out-of-context media that may result in widespread confusion on public issues.” As the video spread to other platforms, TikTok took it down, and Meta labeled it as A.I. However, X’s response was that I should try to get a “community note” to say it was a fake — something the company would not help add.
Klobuchar wants to subject this kind of parody to regulation and legal oversight.
As complicated as this technology is, some solutions are within reach. This year, President Trump signed the Take It Down Act, which Senator Ted Cruz and I pushed to create legal protections for victims when intimate images, including deepfakes, are shared without their consent. This law addresses the rise in cases of predators using A.I. tools to create nude images of victims to humiliate or extort them. We know the consequences of this can be deadly; at least 20 children have died by suicide recently because of the threat of explicit images being shared without their consent.
That bill was only the first step. That is why I am again working across the aisle on a bill to give all Americans more control over how deepfakes of our voices and visual likenesses are used. The proposed bipartisan No Fakes Act — cosponsored by Senators Chris Coons and Thom Tillis, Ms. Blackburn and me — would give people the right to demand that social media companies remove deepfakes of their voice and likeness while making exceptions for speech protected by the First Amendment.
I'm not sure the new law Klobuchar is pitching is terribly analogous to the one co-sponsored with Ted Cruz. "Revenge porn" is substantially different from mocking a politician. Likewise, I'm not certain that any legislation that brings Klobuchar together with Chris Coons, Thom Tillis, and Marsha Blackburn is necessarily good for the country. This seems to me to be an effort to, dare I say, "chill" First Amendment speech by opening publishers to liability and thus convincing them to forbid certain content. We saw how that worked during COVID and, regarding the 2020 election, I certainly don't want to go back there. I think current slander/libel/defamation law covers the instance Klobuchar gave of a private citizen victimized by AI and an overzealous bunch of Klobuchar clones.
Last year someone used A.I. to clone the voice of a high school principal in Maryland and create audio of him making racist and antisemitic comments. By the time the audio was proved to be fake, the principal had already been placed on administrative leave, and families and students were left deeply hurt.
The very last thing we should do is follow the lead of the EU on anything dealing with economics or personal freedom.
The United States is not alone in rising to this challenge. The European Union’s A.I. Act, adopted in 2024, mandates that A.I.-generated content be clearly labeled and watermarked. And in Denmark, legislation is being considered to give all citizens copyright over their faces and voices, forcing platforms to remove unauthorized deepfakes just as they would pull down copyrighted music.
In the United States and within the bounds of our Constitution, we must put in place common-sense safeguards for artificial intelligence. They must at least include labeling requirements for content that is substantially generated by A.I.
Sometimes, the solution is much worse than the problem. This is one of them. There are already laws that cover the inappropriate use of images and likenesses. Unfortunately, what Klobuchar wants is not a law that protects us, but one that shields politicians from mockery. Klobuchar says, "We can love the technology, and we can use the technology, but we can’t cede all the power over our own images and our privacy. It is time for members of Congress to stand up for their constituents, stop currying favor with the tech companies and set the record straight. In a democracy, we do that by enacting laws. And it is long past time to pass one."
In democracies, we also do that by not inflicting pain on society in general, so the most privileged can be shielded.
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