[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 120 (Wednesday, July 24, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5366-S5368]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

  SA 3070. Ms. CANTWELL submitted an amendment intended to be proposed 
by her to the bill S. 4638, to authorize appropriations for fiscal year 
2025 for military activities of the Department of Defense, for military 
construction, and for defense activities of the Department of Energy, 
to prescribe military personnel strengths for such fiscal year, and for 
other purposes; which was ordered to lie on the table; as follows:

       At the end of subtitle H of title X, add the following:

     SEC. 1095. TRANSPARENCY WITH RESPECT TO CONTENT PROVENANCE 
                   INFORMATION.

       (a) Sense of Congress.--It is the sense of Congress that--
       (1) there is a lack of--
       (A) visibility into how artificial intelligence systems 
     work;
       (B) transparency regarding the information used to train 
     such systems; and
       (C) consensus-based standards and practices to guide the 
     development and deployment of such systems;

[[Page S5367]]

       (2) it is becoming increasingly difficult to assess the 
     nature, origins, and authenticity of digital content that has 
     been generated or modified algorithmically;
       (3) these deficiencies negatively impact the public and, 
     particularly, the journalists, publishers, broadcasters, and 
     artists whose content is used to train these systems and is 
     manipulated to produce synthetic content and synthetically-
     modified content that competes unfairly in the digital 
     marketplace with covered content; and
       (4) the development and adoption of consensus-based 
     standards would mitigate these impacts, catalyze innovation 
     in this nascent industry, and put the United States in a 
     position to lead the development of artificial intelligence 
     systems moving forward.
       (b) Definitions.--In this section:
       (1) Artificial intelligence.--The term ``artificial 
     intelligence'' has the meaning given the term in section 5002 
     of the National Artificial Intelligence Initiative Act of 
     2020 (15 U.S.C. 9401).
       (2) Artificial intelligence blue-teaming.--The term 
     ``artificial intelligence blue-teaming'' means an effort to 
     conduct operational vulnerability evaluations and provide 
     mitigation techniques to entities who have a need for an 
     independent technical review of the security posture of an 
     artificial intelligence system.
       (3) Artificial intelligence red-teaming.--The term 
     ``artificial intelligence red-teaming'' means structured 
     adversarial testing efforts of an artificial intelligence 
     system to identify risks, flaws, and vulnerabilities of the 
     artificial intelligence system, such as harmful outputs from 
     the system, unforeseen or undesirable system behaviors, 
     limitations, or potential risks associated with the misuse of 
     the system.
       (4) Content provenance information.--The term ``content 
     provenance information'' means state-of-the-art, machine-
     readable information documenting the origin and history of a 
     piece of digital content, such as an image, a video, audio, 
     or text.
       (5) Covered content .--The term ``covered content'' means a 
     digital representation, such as text, an image, or audio or 
     video content, of any work of authorship described in section 
     102 of title 17, United States Code.
       (6) Covered platform.--The term ``covered platform'' means 
     a website, internet application, or mobile application 
     available to users in the United States, including a social 
     networking site, video sharing service, search engine, or 
     content aggregation service available to users in the United 
     States, that either--
       (A) generates at least $50,000,000 in annual revenue; or
       (B) had at least 25,000,000 monthly active users for not 
     fewer than 3 of the 12 months immediately preceding any 
     conduct by the covered platform in violation of this Act.
       (7) Deepfake.--The term ``deepfake'' means synthetic 
     content or synthetically-modified content that--
       (A) appears authentic to a reasonable person; and
       (B) creates a false understanding or impression.
       (8) Director.--The term ``Director'' means the Under 
     Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director 
     of the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
       (9) Synthetic content.--The term ``synthetic content'' 
     means information, including works of human authorship such 
     as images, videos, audio clips, and text, that has been 
     wholly generated by algorithms, including by artificial 
     intelligence.
       (10) Synthetically-modified content.--The term 
     ``synthetically-modified content'' means information, 
     including works of human authorship such as images, videos, 
     audio clips, and text, that has been significantly modified 
     by algorithms, including by artificial intelligence.
       (11) Under secretary.--The term ``Under Secretary'' means 
     the Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology.
       (12) Watermarking.--The term ``watermarking'' means the act 
     of embedding information that is intended to be difficult to 
     remove into an output, including an output such as text, an 
     image, an audio, a video, software code, or any other digital 
     content or data, for the purposes of verifying the 
     authenticity of the output or the identity or characteristics 
     of its provenance, modifications, or conveyance
       (c) Facilitation of Development of Standards for Content 
     Provenance Information and Detection of Synthetic Content and 
     Synthetically-Modified Content.--
       (1) In general.--The Under Secretary shall establish a 
     public-private partnership to facilitate the development of 
     standards regarding content provenance information 
     technologies and the detection of synthetic content and 
     synthetically-modified content, including with respect to the 
     following:
       (A) Facilitating the development of guidelines and 
     voluntary, consensus-based standards and best practices for 
     watermarking, content provenance information, synthetic 
     content and synthetically-modified content detection, 
     including for images, audio, video, text, and multimodal 
     content, the use of data to train artificial intelligence 
     systems, and such other matters relating to transparency of 
     synthetic media as the Under Secretary considers appropriate.
       (B) Facilitating the development of guidelines, metrics, 
     and practices to evaluate and assess tools to detect and 
     label synthetic content, synthetically-modified content, and 
     non-synthetic content, including artificial intelligence red-
     teaming and artificial intelligence blue-teaming.
       (C) Establishing grand challenges and prizes in 
     coordination with the Defense Advanced Research Projects 
     Agency and the National Science Foundation to detect and 
     label synthetic content, synthetically-modified content, and 
     non-synthetic content and to develop cybersecurity and other 
     countermeasures to defend against tampering with detection 
     tools, watermarks, or content provenance information.
       (2) Consultation.--In developing the standards described in 
     paragraph (1), the Under Secretary shall consult with the 
     Register of Copyrights and the Director.
       (d) National Institute of Standards and Technology 
     Research, Development, and Public Education Regarding 
     Synthetic Content and Synthetically-Modified Content.--
       (1) Research and development.--The Under Secretary shall 
     carry out a research program to enable advances in 
     measurement science, standards, and testing relating to the 
     robustness and efficacy of--
       (A) technologies for synthetic content and synthetically-
     modified content detection, watermarking, and content 
     provenance information; and
       (B) cybersecurity protections and other countermeasures 
     used to prevent tampering with such technologies.
       (2) Public education campaigns regarding synthetic 
     content.--Not later than 1 year after the date of enactment 
     of this Act, the Under Secretary shall, in consultation with 
     the Register of Copyrights and the Director, carry out a 
     public education campaign regarding synthetic content and 
     synthetically-modified content (including deepfakes), 
     watermarking, and content provenance information.
       (e) Requirements for Content Provenance Information; 
     Prohibited Acts.--
       (1) Content provenance information.--
       (A) Synthetic content and synthetically-modified content.--
     Beginning on the date that is 2 years after the date of 
     enactment of this Act, any person who, for a commercial 
     purpose, makes available in interstate commerce a tool used 
     for the primary purpose of creating synthetic content or 
     synthetically-modified content shall--
       (i) taking into consideration the content provenance 
     information standards established under subsection (c), 
     provide users of such tool with the ability to include 
     content provenance information that indicates the piece of 
     digital content is synthetic content or synthetically-
     modified content for any synthetic content or synthetically-
     modified content created by the tool; and
       (ii) in the event a user opts to include content provenance 
     information under clause (i), establish, to the extent 
     technically feasible, reasonable security measures to ensure 
     that such content provenance information is machine-readable 
     and not easily removed, altered, or separated from the 
     underlying content.
       (B) Covered content.--Beginning on the date that is 2 years 
     after the date of enactment of this Act, any person who, for 
     a commercial purpose, makes available in interstate commerce 
     a tool used for the primary purpose of creating or 
     substantially modifying covered content shall--
       (i) taking into consideration the content provenance 
     information standards established under subsection (c), 
     provide users of such tool with the ability to include 
     content provenance information for any covered content 
     created or significantly modified by the tool; and
       (ii) in the event a user opts to include content provenance 
     information under clause (i), establish, to the extent 
     technically feasible, reasonable security measures to ensure 
     that such content provenance information is machine-readable 
     and not easily removed, altered, or separated from the 
     underlying content.
       (2) Removal of content provenance information.--
       (A) In general.--It shall be unlawful for any person to 
     knowingly remove, alter, tamper with, or disable content 
     provenance information in furtherance of an unfair or 
     deceptive act or practice in or affecting commerce.
       (B) Covered platforms.--
       (i) In general.--Subject to clause (ii), it shall be 
     unlawful for a covered platform, to remove, alter, tamper 
     with, or disable content provenance information or to 
     separate the content provenance information from the content 
     so that the content provenance information cannot be accessed 
     by users of the platform.
       (ii) Exception for security research.--A covered platform 
     shall not be liable for a violation of clause (i) if such 
     covered platform removes, alters, tampers with, or disables 
     content provenance information for a purpose necessary, 
     proportionate, and limited to perform research to enhance the 
     security of the covered platform.
       (3) Prohibition on non-consensual use of covered content 
     that has attached or associated content provenance 
     information.--It shall be unlawful for any person, for a 
     commercial purpose, to knowingly use any covered content that 
     has content provenance information that is attached to or 
     associated with such covered content or covered content from 
     which the person knows or should know that content provenance 
     information has been removed or separated in violation of 
     paragraph (2), in order to train a system

[[Page S5368]]

     that uses artificial intelligence or an algorithm or to 
     generate synthetic content or synthetically-modified content 
     unless such person obtains the express, informed consent of 
     the person who owns the covered content, and complies with 
     any terms of use pertaining to the use of such content, 
     including terms regarding compensation for such use, as 
     required by the owner of copyright in such content.
       (f) Enforcement.--
       (1) Enforcement by the commission.--
       (A) Unfair or deceptive acts or practices.--A violation of 
     this section or a regulation promulgated under this section 
     shall be treated as a violation of a rule defining an unfair 
     or deceptive act or practice prescribed under section 
     18(a)(1)(B) of the Federal Trade Commission Act (15 U.S.C. 
     57a(a)(1)(B)).
       (B) Powers of the commission.--
       (i) In general.--The Commission shall enforce this section 
     in the same manner, by the same means, and with the same 
     jurisdiction, powers, and duties as though all applicable 
     terms and provisions of the Federal Trade Commission Act (15 
     U.S.C. 41 et seq.) were incorporated into and made a part of 
     this title.
       (ii) Privileges and immunities.--Any person who violates 
     this section, or a regulation promulgated under this section 
     shall be subject to the penalties and entitled to the 
     privileges and immunities provided in the Federal Trade 
     Commission Act (15 U.S.C. 41 et seq.).
       (iii) Authority preserved.--Nothing in this section shall 
     be construed to limit the authority of the Commission under 
     any other provision of law.
       (2) Enforcement by states.--
       (A) In general.--In any case in which the attorney general 
     of a State has reason to believe that an interest of the 
     residents of the State has been or is threatened or adversely 
     affected by the engagement of any person in a practice that 
     violates this section, the attorney general of the State may, 
     as parens patriae, bring a civil action on behalf of the 
     residents of the State in an appropriate district court of 
     the United States to--
       (i) enjoin further violation of this section by such 
     person;
       (ii) compel compliance with this section;
       (iii) obtain damages, restitution, or other compensation on 
     behalf of such residents; and
       (iv) obtain such other relief as the court may consider to 
     be appropriate.
       (B) Rights of the commission.--
       (i) Notice to the commission.--

       (I) In general.--Except as provided in subclause (III), the 
     attorney general of a State shall notify the Commission in 
     writing that the attorney general intends to bring a civil 
     action under subparagraph (A) before initiating the civil 
     action.
       (II) Contents.--The notification required by subclause (I) 
     with respect to a civil action shall include a copy of the 
     complaint to be filed to initiate the civil action.
       (III) Exception.--If it is not feasible for the attorney 
     general of a State to provide the notification required by 
     subclause (I) before initiating a civil action under 
     subparagraph (A), the attorney general shall notify the 
     Commission immediately upon instituting the civil action.

       (ii) Intervention by the commission.--The Commission may--

       (I) intervene in any civil action brought by the attorney 
     general of a State under subparagraph (A); and
       (II) upon intervening--

       (aa) be heard on all matters arising in the civil action; 
     and
       (bb) file petitions for appeal of a decision in the civil 
     action.
       (C) Investigatory powers.--Nothing in this paragraph may be 
     construed to prevent the attorney general of a State from 
     exercising the powers conferred on the attorney general by 
     the laws of the State to conduct investigations, to 
     administer oaths or affirmations, or to compel the attendance 
     of witnesses or the production of documentary or other 
     evidence.
       (D) Action by the commission.--If the Commission institutes 
     a civil action or an administrative action with respect to a 
     violation of this section, the attorney general of a State 
     may not, during the pendency of such action, bring a civil 
     action under subparagraph (A) against any defendant named in 
     the complaint of the Commission for the violation with 
     respect to which the Commission instituted such action.
       (E) Venue; service or process.--
       (i) Venue.--Any action brought under subparagraph (A) may 
     be brought in--

       (I) the district court of the United States that meets 
     applicable requirements relating to venue under section 1391 
     of title 28, United States Code; or
       (II) another court of competent jurisdiction.

       (ii) Service of process.--In an action brought under 
     subparagraph (A), process may be served in any district in 
     which the defendant--

       (I) is an inhabitant; or
       (II) may be found.

       (F) Actions by other state officials.--
       (i) In general.--In addition to civil actions brought by 
     attorneys general under subparagraph (A), any other officer 
     of a State who is authorized by the State to do so may bring 
     a civil action under subparagraph (A), subject to the same 
     requirements and limitations that apply under this paragraph 
     to civil actions brought by attorneys general.
       (ii) Savings provision.--Nothing in this paragraph may be 
     construed to prohibit an authorized official of a State from 
     initiating or continuing any proceeding in a court of the 
     State for a violation of any civil or criminal law of the 
     State.
       (G) Damages.--If a person brings a civil action for a 
     violation of this section pursuant to paragraph (3) and 
     receives any monetary damages, the court shall reduce the 
     amount of any damages awarded under this paragraph by the 
     amount of monetary damages awarded to such person.
       (3) Enforcement by private parties and government 
     entities.--
       (A) In general.--Any person who owns covered content that 
     has content provenance information that is attached to or 
     associated with such covered content may bring a civil action 
     in a court of competent jurisdiction against--
       (i) any person or covered platform for removing, altering, 
     tampering with, or disabling such content provenance 
     information in violation of subparagraph (A) or (B) of 
     subsection (e)(2); and
       (ii) any person for using such covered content in violation 
     of subsection (e)(3).
       (B) Relief.--In a civil action brought under subparagraph 
     (A) in which the plaintiff prevails, the court may award the 
     plaintiff declaratory or injunctive relief, compensatory 
     damages, and reasonable litigation expenses, including a 
     reasonable attorney's fee.
       (C) Statute of limitations.--An action for a violation of 
     this section brought under this paragraph may be commenced 
     not later than 4 years after the date upon which the 
     plaintiff discovers or should have discovered the facts 
     giving rise to such violation.
       (g) Rule of Construction.--This section does not impair or 
     in any way alter the rights of copyright owners under any 
     other applicable law.
       (h) Severability.--If any provision of this section, or an 
     amendment made by this section, is determined to be 
     unenforceable or invalid, the remaining provisions of this 
     section and the amendments made by this section shall not be 
     affected.
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