Paris Hilton Compares Trauma She Faced After the Leak of Her 2004 S-- Tape to the Current AI Deepfake Crisis: 'It Was Abuse'

Paris Hilton is opening up about the long-lasting trauma she endured after the unauthorized release of her private s-- tape — and why she believes the current rise of AI deepfakes mirrors the same kind of "abuse" on a much larger and more dangerous scale.

The heiress visited Capitol Hill on Thursday, January 22, where she advocated for the Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits Act, commonly referred to as the DEFIANCE Act.

During her visit, Hilton reflected on the painful aftermath she experienced when the said clip was leaked when she was a teen in the early 2000s.

“When I was 19 years old, a private, intimate video of me was shared with the world without my consent,” Hilton said. “People called it a scandal. It wasn’t. It was abuse. There were no laws at the time to protect me. There weren’t even words for what had been done to me. The internet was still new, and so was the cruelty that came with it.”

“They sold my pain for clicks, and then they told me to be quiet, to move on, to even be grateful for the attention,” she continued. “These people didn’t see me as a young woman who had been exploited. They didn’t see the panic that I felt, the humiliation or the shame. No one asked me what I lost — I lost control over my body, over my reputation. My sense of safety and self-worth was stolen from me.”

The DEFIANCE Act, which Hilton is strongly urging lawmakers to pass, would allow victims to sue individuals who create or distribute nonconsensual, sexually explicit AI-generated images — a move she said is long overdue as technology continues to outpace legal protections.

Although Hilton once believed she had moved past the worst of the ordeal, she admitted the rapid rise of artificial intelligence has reopened old wounds in an even more unsettling way.

“What happened to me then is happening now to millions of women and girls in a new and more terrifying way,” she said. “Before, someone had to betray your trust and steal something real. Now all it takes is a computer and a stranger’s imagination. Deepfake p---ography has become an epidemic.”

Hilton also revealed that she has personally been targeted by more than 100,000 explicit AI-generated images.

“Not one of them is real, not one of them is consensual,” she shared. “And each time a new one appears, that horrible feeling returns, that fear that someone somewhere is looking at it right now and thinking it’s real.”

“No amount of money or lawyers can stop it or protect me from more,” Hilton said. “It’s the newest form of victimization happening at scale, to your daughters, your sisters, your friends and neighbors.”

More than two decades after her infamous adult film made headlines worldwide, the reality TV star revisited the deeply painful chapter in her new documentary, Infinite Icon: A Visual Memoir.

Hilton previously opened up about how the private footage she filmed with then-boyfriend Rick Salomon in 2001 was released without her consent.

"I had been through a lot in my life, but then to be publicly humiliated in such a way with someone who I loved and trusted ... I had no idea that anyone would ever even see this," Hilton told Fox News Digital in January.

"It was just humiliating," she added. "I didn’t want to leave my house. I felt the whole world was looking at it, laughing and villainizing me. I was a young girl who had come out of a very traumatizing place and met the wrong person who could do something like that to me."

The “Stars Are Blind” singer continued to reflect on the long-term impact of the experience.

"It’s something that will affect me for the rest of my life. I don’t know if I’ll ever fully be healed from that. It’s something that will haunt me for the rest of my life."