Law / United States / 
Tennessee
Preventing Deepfake Images Act
Tenn. Code Ann. §§ 39-17-1901 to 39-17-1906 (Pub. Ch. 466, 2025)
In force since .
An AI prohibited practices rule binding public and private bodies.
- Obligation class
- Prohibition
- Audit expectation
- none
- Setting the rule reaches
- General
What it requires
- Do not intentionally disclose, or threaten to disclose, an intimate digital depiction, including one that is AI-generated or AI-manipulated, of an identifiable person without that person's consent.
- Consent to the creation of an intimate digital depiction does not establish consent to its disclosure; valid consent to disclosure must be a signed, plain-language agreement describing the depiction and any work it will be incorporated into.
These lines are LexLint's reading of the law's text.
In the frameworks
- NIST AI RMF
- MAP 3.3Targeted application scope is specified and documented based on the system’s capability, established context, and AI system categorization.
- NIST AI 600-1
- GAI-RISK-08Information Integrity
- GAI-RISK-11Obscene, Degrading, and/or Abusive Content
- MIT mitigations Draft
- NIST Privacy Framework
- CT.PO-P1Policies, processes, and procedures for authorizing data processing (e.g., organizational decisions, individual consent), revoking authorizations, and maintaining authorizations are established and in place.
- FINOS AIGF
- AIR-PREV-005System Acceptance Testing
- ETSI EN 304 223
Our reading of where this law's duties sit in each framework. It never says that running a control meets the law. How we read a framework against the law
Identifiers refer to ETSI EN 304 223 V2.1.1 (2025-12), © ETSI 2025, all rights reserved. ETSI owns the standard; no ETSI text (titles or sentences) is reproduced here. The standard is free to download from ETSI.
If you get it wrong
Criminal exposureYes
Private right of actionYes
Criminal exposure note
A violation of section 39-17-1906(a), disclosing, threatening to disclose or soliciting the disclosure of an intimate digital depiction with the intent to harass, annoy, threaten, alarm, or cause substantial harm to the finances or reputation of the depicted individual, or with actual knowledge or reckless disregard that the disclosure will cause harm, is a Class E felony, or a Class C felony where the creation, reproduction, or distribution of the depiction could be reasonably expected to affect the conduct of a governmental administrative, legislative, or judicial proceeding, including the administration of an election, or to facilitate violence.
Statutory damages
In a civil action an individual may recover the defendant's monetary gain from the depiction, plus either actual damages (including emotional distress) or liquidated damages of $150,000, plus punitive damages under Tenn. Code Ann. § 29-39-104 and attorney's fees and costs.
- As of
- Currency
- USD
- Per person minimum
- 150,000
Who enforces it
Enforcement body
Private plaintiffs: the depicted individual, or for a minor or an incompetent, incapacitated or deceased individual a guardian, estate representative, family member or court-appointed person, may bring a civil action; a violation of section 39-17-1906 is also a Class E or Class C felony.
Settledness
- As of
- Open questions
- Does "make accessible" in the definition of "disclose" in section 39-17-1902(5) reach the operator of a tool that lets a user create an intimate digital depiction of an identifiable individual but does not itself transfer the depiction to anyone else?
- Does a depicted individual who is identifiable only "from information displayed in connection with the digital depiction" under section 39-17-1902(3) include one named only in a caption added by someone other than the person who disclosed the depiction?
What it makes you log
Who may demand the log
Court
What the log must hold
Consent or opt-out state, Affected person reference, Disclosure shown
Logging duty
Section 39-17-1903(c) states that consent to disclose an intimate digital depiction is valid only if set out in a plain-language agreement, signed knowingly and voluntarily by the depicted individual, describing the depiction and the work it will be incorporated into. It never uses the words logs, records or audit trail, but a person relying on consent as a defense to the civil action in Sec. 39-17-1903(a) cannot demonstrate valid consent without producing that signed agreement, so the duty is implicit. Section 39-17-1906's criminal offense has no consent element or defense of its own; the consent-validity test in subsection (c) applies, by its own words, only to an action under Section 39-17-1903.
- Kind
- Implicit
- As of
- Provision
- Tenn. Code Ann. Sec. 39-17-1903(c)
- Trigger
- consent_or_optout
What this law does
Creates a new part of the criminal code defining an intimate digital depiction as one appearing to show nudity or sexual content and created or altered through digital manipulation, and a deepfake as a video, image, or audio file generated or manipulated by artificial intelligence to realistically portray something that did not occur.
A person who intentionally discloses, or threatens to disclose, an intimate digital depiction of an identifiable individual without consent, knowing or recklessly disregarding that consent was absent, is liable to a civil action and, where the disclosure is intended to harass or cause harm, commits a Class E felony, rising to a Class C felony where the disclosure could reasonably be expected to affect a governmental proceeding, including an election, or facilitate violence.
A provider of an interactive computer service is not liable for content supplied by another person or for good-faith restriction of access to such depictions.
When LexLint raises it
When your app profile says your app generates audio with AI, generates images with AI, generates video with AI or publishes adult content.
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