Bree Smith said she’s the victim of a semi-nude deepfake. Now, she wants the law changed

Former NewsChannel 5 meteorologist Bree Smith is pushing for changes to Tennessee law after multiple social media accounts used her image in faked pictures and sexually charged AI deepfake videos to scam her fans.

“Last fall, fake Facebook accounts pretending to be me started popping up. These accounts used fake pictures that showed my face on someone else’s semi-nude body,” Smith told the House Criminal Justice Subcommittee on Wednesday.

“They also make fake videos that used my face and my name to try to convince people that it was really me. Discovering these imposter accounts and seeing the degrading fake images and videos was devastating to me,” she said.

Smith, 43, testified in support of HB1299, known as the Preventing Deep Fake Images Act, which makes it a felony “to disclose or threaten to disclose or solicit 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.”

The bill also lets people sue and recover financial damages from those who post pictures or videos of “intimate digital depiction … without the consent of the individual” or those who “recklessly disregards whether the individual has not consented to such disclosure.”

Related: Bree Smith, NewsChannel 5 failed to get semi-nude deepfakes removed

Smith said she was devastated to learn there was little recourse for the onslaught of fake accounts and disturbing images. She said she took her concerns to her then-employer and to social media companies but was told nothing could be done.

The subcommittee in a 7-0 vote advanced the bill, a move Smith called “overwhelming.”

“There is still a lot of work to be done,” Smith told The Tennessean after she testified. “But I’m glad to see progress moving forward, because I think that this is necessary as a protection for everybody in Tennessee.”

In her testimony, Smith said the people who created the fake images and videos were using them to try to convince Smith’s fans to send them money.

In one case, Smith testified, a viewer received a few fake videos where it appeared Smith “promised many sexual acts and asked the viewer to send them money to book a two-night stay at the Conrad Hotel.”

“Personally, it has been very degrading and it plummeted me into a very dark depression,” Smith testified. “Having my face, my reputation and my identity distorted into something so vile and vulnerable traumatized me and my family.

“This has devastated my life’s work,” testified Smith, who had been chief meteorologist at NewsChannel 5 for nine years before she and the station parted ways in January. The station said at the time that Smith’s contract had ended and WTVF and Smith couldn’t agree on terms for a new contract.

“I did what I did because I believed that I could help people. I believed that when severe weather was happening, I could save people’s lives. So to then have my face, my reputation, the trust this community put in me now being weaponized, to hurt the very people I spent my entire career trying to protect? I mean it essentially it stole what I worked so hard to create and put me in an impossible place where now I was the threat to the people I spent my entire career protecting.”

The bill is sponsored by Rep. Jason Powell, D-Nashville, and a state Senate version is being sponsored by Sen. Jeff Yarbro, D-Nashville.

Reach Brad Schmitt at brad@tennessean.com or Melissa Brown at mbrown@tennessean.com.

(This story has been updated to change a video and to add some testimony.)

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Ex-NewsChannel 5 staffer Bree Smith testifies about deepfake video