Digital Abuse Is Sexual Abuse: Minnesota's Groundbreaking Law — and the Lawsuit to Kill It

**Jessica Hanson** (0:00)
We're 50% of the population, and then even more when you include kids in this, and we're 99% of the victims of AI Deepfakes, right? And so I think we deserve to have a voice in this argument, we deserve to have a fight for it.

**Laurie Segall** (0:16)
I'm Laurie Segall, and you're listening to Mostly Human, a tech podcast through a human lens.
Representative Hanson and Molly Kelley, welcome to Mostly Human. I am so excited to be on with y'all today, especially on this topic. Molly, we met years ago talking about deepfake abuse because I was investigating the man behind one of the largest deepfake pornography sites. And you so generously and bravely shared your story of what happened to you and so many of the women in your community. And I just want to say it was a time when people weren't speaking out as much as they are now about it. And I really admired that because I know how hard that was. And so before we jump in to the Minnesota law and what we're going to be talking about today, if you don't mind, could you go back and share a little bit of what happened and how we met?

**Molly Kelley** (1:13)
So in 2024, in that summer, I was six months pregnant and enjoying my summer at home. I just finished my first year of law school. And the very recent ex-wife of my husband's best friend of 20 years came over and said, I have to speak with you today. And she told us that she had found on her ex-husband's computer, deepfaked videos and images of me and many of our close friends, about 80 women. And that was shocking.
To say the least, and it ended friendships of 20 years. And trying to understand what the images were and what the videos actually were, cracked open a endless questions on what to do, how to deal with it, and exposed major gaps in both enforcement of any laws that were on the books. And I came to find showed glaring gaps in actually being effective laws are two different things. And it just, it feels so quaint now to think back to that time because it's the technology has spread so rapidly. But two years ago, even trying to explain this, I had to draw pictures for people. I had to make flow charts to try to get people to understand what was happening. It took a lot of time and a lot of mental energy, a lot of emotional energy.
I was pregnant and had newborn. It really took away from what should have been a special time in our life.

**Laurie Segall** (3:07)
I'll never forget when we first met, I had just had a baby.
I remember talking to you from a doctor's appointment, actually. It hit me in a different way knowing I had just had a baby, a young boy, and that you had just had a baby. You were talking about this idea that the person next door, the person who was in your lives, in your orbit, could have created deepfakes, sexually explicit deepfakes of the whole neighborhood. And really digging into how you had to go search for your own abuse online as someone who had been very specific and careful about who you are out there in the digital world and the psychological impact that had on you. And I will never forget sitting in a hospital room after talking to you and you saying, does reality matter? And you really wanting to fight for this. And so I just want to, on a human note, years later, how are you doing?

**Molly Kelley** (4:08)
I'm doing pretty well.
I'm doing pretty well. I think at the time I said, I told you that it really felt like the sword of Damocles is hanging over my head. You know, at any point, at any point, they could, you know, it would just surface and then it's just, what, either I decide to not care anymore or play whack-a-mole trying to find them, which is, it's a ridiculous endeavor. And so now I guess I feel a little like Sisyphus pushing a rock up a hill because it really has been, it's been hundreds of hours of my time doing this.

**Laurie Segall** (4:48)
And so, Representative Hanson, thank you so much for joining this conversation. You're at the forefront of a new law that is trying to address the type of abuse that Molly dealt with in Minnesota. So before we get to that law, I'd love to hear a little bit about how you both were connected and how you met and what struck you about it.