May 19, 2026
Mrs. Foushee (for herself, Mr. Moylan, Mr. Beyer, and Mr. Fitzpatrick) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
To require the National Institute of Standards and Technology to establish task forces to facilitate and inform the development of technical standards and guidelines relating to the identification of content created by generative artificial intelligence, and for other purposes.
Section 1. Short title
This Act may be cited as the Protecting Consumers from Deceptive AI Act
.
Sec. 2. Guidelines to facilitate distinguishing content generated by generative artificial intelligence
(a) Task forces for development of guidelines and promoting standards
(1) In general
Not later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology shall establish task forces to accomplish the following goals:
(A)
Supporting the development of technical standards and guidelines to provide content provenance metadata, watermarking, digital fingerprinting for audio or visual content, and other technical measures that the task forces determine significant. To the extent technically feasible, such task forces should seek to make content provenance metadata cryptographically verifiable, and to make watermarks difficult to remove or obscure.
(B)
Supporting the development of technical standards and guidelines to assist online application and content providers and operators in identifying and labeling audio or visual content created or substantially modified by generative artificial intelligence, including exploring interoperable standards that assist social media and other online platforms with identifying, maintaining, interpreting, and displaying watermarks, digital fingerprinting, and secure content provenance metadata associated with audio or visual content, while considering circumvention techniques and enforcement.
(C)
Supporting the development of technical standards and guidelines to identify and label text-based content created or substantially modified by generative artificial intelligence. Such support may include developing standards to embed content provenance data or metadata, watermarking, digital fingerprinting, or other technical measures when creating such content.
(2) Standards bodies
To the extent possible, the outcome and output of the task forces established pursuant to paragraph (1) should inform development of technical standards developed by private, consensus organizations, as referred to in section 2 of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Act (15 U.S.C. 272) and OMB Circular A–119.
(3) Membership
The Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology shall include in the memberships of each of the task forces described in paragraph (1) appropriate representatives of the following:
(A)
Relevant Federal agencies.
(B)
Developers of generative artificial intelligence.
(C)
Entities, including standards development organizations, engaged in the development of content detection standards and technology, including authentication and traceability.
(D)
Social networking service providers and online instant messaging service providers.
(E)
Online search engine service providers.
(F)
Developers of web browsers and mobile operating systems.
(G)
Academic entities, civil society and advocacy groups, and other related entities, especially such entities and groups engaged in the development or implementation of content detection standards and technology.
(H)
Privacy advocates and experts.
(I)
Human rights lawyers and advocates with expertise in the effects of technology in countries around the world.
(J)
Media organizations, including news publishers and image providers.
(K)
Creator associations and organizations representing the interests of other copyright owners.
(L)
Labor organizations with expertise relating to the workforce impacts of generative artificial intelligence.
(M)
Artificial intelligence testing experts, such as those with privacy expertise in artificial intelligence red-teaming.
(N)
Technical experts in digital forensics, cryptography, and secure digital content and delivery.
(O)
Any other entity the Director determines appropriate.
(4) Duties
(A) Submission to Director
Each of the task forces established pursuant to paragraph (1) shall, not later than 270 days after the establishment of each such task force, submit to the Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology a report containing recommendations relating to the technical standards and guidelines each such task force is supporting.
(B) Submission to Congress
Each of the task forces established pursuant to paragraph (1) shall, not later than one year after the establishment of each such task force and annually thereafter for five years, submit to the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology and the Committee on Energy and Commerce of the House of Representatives and the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation of the Senate a report on the activities of such task force for the immediately preceding one year period.
(5) Privacy
The task forces established pursuant to paragraph (1) shall consider issuing guidance for online service and application providers and operators to store and display content provenance data and metadata in a privacy-preserving manner, including clear guidance on how such providers and operators can indicate to users when such users are sharing content that contains content provenance data and metadata, indicate the information contained in the data and metadata such users are sharing, and provide options to limit the data and metadata such users are sharing that may have privacy implications.
(b) Definitions
In this section:
(1) Audio or visual content
The term audio or visual content means content in the form of a digital image, a video, or audio.
(2) Content provenance
The term content provenance means the chronology of the origin and history associated with digital content.
(3) Digital fingerprinting
The term digital fingerprinting means the process by which an identifier is derived from a piece of digital content and stored in a database, for the purpose of identifying, matching against, or verifying such content, or similar content, at a later date.
(4) Generative artificial intelligence
The term generative artificial intelligence means the class of models and algorithms that use deep learning algorithms or other statistical techniques to generate new data that has similar characteristics and properties to the data with respect to which such models and algorithms have been trained, including any form of digital content.
(5) Labor organization
The term labor organization
has the meaning given such term in section 10002 of the Research and Development, Competition, and Innovation Act (42 U.S.C. 18901).
(6) Metadata
The term metadata has the meaning given such term in section 3502 of title 44, United States Code.
(7) Watermarking
The term watermarking means the act of embedding tamper-resistant information into digital content (perceptibly or imperceptibly) which may be used to establish some aspect or aspects of the content provenance of the content or to store reference information.