Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Harvey Weinstein has been indicted on more sexual assault charges, two women are now behind most U.S. mortgages, and AI companies join a commitment to update the Violence Against Women Act for the 2020s. Have a restful weekend.
– VAWA and AI. Thirty years ago today, the Violence Against Women Act was signed into law. The legislation helped take domestic violence from an issue considered a “private family matter” to a serious crime. Between 1993 and 2022, domestic violence in the U.S. dropped 67%.
Today, gender-based violence also happens online. As part of a new set of initiatives marking the legislation’s 30th anniversary today, the White House has secured voluntary commitments from major tech companies to prevent online sexual abuse, including nonconsensual AI deepfakes.
Adobe, Anthropic, Cohere, Microsoft, and OpenAI committed to removing nude images from AI training datasets “when appropriate and depending on the purpose of the model.” Those companies also committed to “stress-testing strategies in their development processes” to guard against AI models releasing image-based sexual abuse. Companies also committed to responsibly sourcing their data sets to avoid image-based sexual abuse.
The commitments aim to address not just the creation of this content but also its distribution, or the “nefarious ways…this gets out into the world,” says Jen Klein, the director of the White House Gender Policy Council. Companies are responsible for sticking to these commitments themselves, but the White House says getting these major tech businesses on board at all is a win for survivors of online abuse. “It names it and acknowledges it’s real harm,” Klein says. “It’s not something that happens online and stays online.”
The commitments from major players in AI build on actions from other tech companies, including Square and CashApp, which previously agreed to limit payments for companies producing or distributing abusive sexual images. Google, Meta, and Snap Inc. have also taken various steps, the White House said, including improving reporting systems and amplifying resources for survivors of abuse.
President Joe Biden was the one who introduced VAWA as a senator 30 years ago. With his time in office coming to a close, this rollout implies he sees reducing violence against women as a signature issue of his career and administration. It’s one that Vice President Kamala Harris would be likely to continue if she wins the White House. “I know that one of the things she would continue to work on is addressing gender-based violence wherever and whenever it occurs,” Klein says.
This week’s announcements also include the funding of a resource center that addresses cybercrimes, including cyberstalking and nonconsensual and unlawful sharing of nude images. Outside of online abuse, there’s additional funding for the Department of Justice for the prevention of gender-based violence. Five federal agencies are committed to working together to meet the housing needs of survivors of domestic abuse, which is a leading cause of homelessness. (Some were initially authorized by the VAWA Reauthorization Act of 2022.)
Biden hosted survivors of domestic abuse at the White House last night to mark the anniversary. He wrote in a Glamour op-ed: “We cannot stop fighting until every woman and girl on this planet is not only free from violence, fear, and abuse—but empowered to reach her full potential.”
Emma Hinchliffe
[email protected]
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