In this episode of Legal Late Night, we’re pivoting from a nostalgic, mildly traumatic dive into the 1986 Transformers movie to a dark, modern reality that demands swift action. I’m joined by Harshita Ganesh, an attorney at CMBG3 Law, to dissect the parameters of the Take It Down Act and discover what happens when federal criminal statutes finally catch up to AI-generated non-consensual pornography.
Before we address the absolute nightmare fuel that is unregulated generative AI, we need to take a look at the historical timeline that turned children’s entertainment into a multi-billion-dollar marketing powerhouse. We’re currently staring down the 40th anniversary of Transformers: The Movie—the 1986 cinematic trauma fest that pulled the rug out from under an entire generation by slaughtering Optimus Prime in the first thirty minutes just to clear warehouse space for a new line of toys.
That corporate ruthlessness didn’t happen in a vacuum. Throughout the 1950s and ’70s, strict broadcast standards decoupled kids’ television from direct corporate product lines. That framework was demolished in the early 1980s when the federal government completely deregulated children’s broadcasting. The gloves came off, allowing toy manufacturers to transition from traditional commercial spots to entire television series engineered strictly as long-form sponsored content. He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Thundercats, and G.I. Joe boomed because a generation of latchkey kids sat home alone eating sugary cereal and consuming content built purely to sell action figures. But while 1980s commercialism gave us banger theme songs, 2020s digital commercialism is giving us something far more sinister.
Our guest tonight, Harshita Ganesh, represents an elite, highly non-linear career trajectory. Armed with a chemical engineering foundation from KU Leuven in Belgium, she went on to conquer corporate law and high-stakes advocacy at Georgetown Law.
As an attorney at CMBG3 Law—a firm whose name is an elegant acronym of its six founding shareholders’ initials—Ganesh brings an analytical, tech-savvy perspective to an area of law that desperately needs subject matter expertise.
The intersection of technology and misogyny has created a massive societal crisis. In May of 2025, federal legislation stepped into the arena with the enforcement of the Take It Down Act. Initiated by a bipartisan coalition following highly public non-consensual deepfakes of high-profile figures, the law immediately criminalized the creation, distribution, or threat of non-consensual AI-generated pornography.
The statutory penalties carry serious teeth, exposing perpetrators to up to two years of federal prison time for adult victims and three years for cases involving minors. In April of 2026, the Department of Justice secured its historic first conviction under the act, successfully prosecuting an Ohio man who mass-produced and sold deepfake imagery of local victims.
Because the Take It Down Act is structured as a federal criminal statute, direct enforcement is exclusively handled by the DOJ. However, Ganesh points out that creative civil litigators can aggressively weaponize this law in common-law tort actions:
Under established tort doctrine, courts can adopt a federal statute as the baseline standard of care for a reasonable person or corporation. If a perpetrator violates federal criminal law by distributing deepfakes, a civil jury can be instructed that the violation constitutes negligence per se, locking down liability for psychological, reputational, and financial damages.
For decades, tech conglomerates like Meta and X have hidden behind Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, claiming absolute civil immunity from user-generated content. But the Take It Down Act explicitly mandates that by May 19, 2026, every mainstream tech platform must deliver transparent, intuitive reporting mechanisms. If a platform drags its feet past the statutory 48-hour removal window, or fails to provide an operational interface to real human support, they fall below the prudent standard of care, opening the floodgates to standard civil negligence suits.
“A woman would have seen this coming five miles away,” Ganesh emphasizes, noting that 91% of software developers in the artificial intelligence sector are male. From the implementation of “spicy mode” subscription models that profit off non-consensual imagery to the introduction of advanced wearable smart glasses lacking structural privacy guardrails, tech development remains dangerously blind to the realities of stalking, harassment, and digital exploitation.
True systemic mitigation requires letting women speak freely in the compliance room before technology launches, rather than waiting for the legal wreckage to pile up in court. Unless and until tech self-polices, lawyers must step up by publishing in law reviews, driving community education programs, and providing robust pro bono representation to strip the shame away from victims and place it squarely where it belongs.
Harshita Ganesh is a prominent litigation attorney at CMBG3 Law, a sophisticated firm specializing in toxic torts, environmental compliance, and high-stakes emerging technology litigation. Combining her extensive background in biochemical engineering with top-tier advocacy trained at Georgetown Law, Ganesh leads strategic defense and compliance initiatives for companies navigating the complex regulatory frameworks of the modern digital landscape.
Want to learn how emerging tech compliance affects your practice area? Listen to the full episode or connect with the litigators at CMBG3 Law. Be sure to visit Legal Broadcasting Company often for our latest podcasts.
A: No. The act is a criminal statute enforced exclusively by the Department of Justice. However, the federal Defiance Act is currently awaiting house approval to establish an explicit federal civil cause of action for deepfake victims.
A: By arguing negligence per se. The Take It Down Act establishes a 48-hour federal benchmark for removal. If a company fails to act within that timeframe, the delayed removal can be entered as conclusive proof that the platform breached its duty of care.
A: Yes. The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) reauthorization of 2022 quietly created an explicit federal civil cause of action (codified under 15 U.S.C. § 6851), allowing victims to sue perpetrators in federal court for the non-consensual disclosure of intimate imagery.
