MORGANTOWN – Legislators advanced several bills to combat “deep fake” child porn on Wednesday.
The House Artificial Intelligence Committee approved HB 5516 to criminalize the use of deep fake images for child porn and for revenge porn.
It defines deep fake as “a visual depiction of an individual that did not occur in reality and the production of which was substantially dependent upon technical means, including artificial intelligence and photoshop software, rather than the ability of another person to physically impersonate the other person.”
The delegates advanced a committee substitute that corrected some problems in the introduced version.
Committee counsel told the members that deep fake technology can fool the average person into believing it was an actual individual.
The revenge porn portion appears in the section of code covering nonconsensual disclosure of private intimate images and deals with publication or transmission of nude or partially nude images. The child porn appears in the code section covering depicting sexually explicit conduct of minors.
It goes next to House Judiciary.
Senate Judiciary took up two related bills.
SB 740 criminalizes altering a photograph, image, video clip, movie or recording containing sexually explicit conduct by inserting the image of an actual minor so it appears that the minor is engaged in sexually explicit conduct.
The crime would carry a fine up to $10,000 and/or one to five years incarceration.
Committee counsel explained that the victim could now be an adult but the image used to create the digital porn was produced when the victim was a minor.
State Police Sgt. Jillian Yeager, with the Crimes Against Children Unit, told the senators that sexual predators will use a photo of an actual victim and impose their face on the body of an adult actor or actress, The predator essentially re-abuses the victim for their own pleasure or to share, or both.
It heads to the full Senate.
Where SB 740 involves using real victims in artificially generated porn, its sister bill, SB 741, addresses entirely digitally or AI generated porn where the image appears to be a minor.
The crime must also fall within the state’s obscenity statute, meaning it has no artistic or redeeming value. So, for instance, as they discussed, naked child-like cherubs in a religious painting wouldn’t qualify.
It criminalizes production, distribution, and possession with intent to distribute. It carries a fine up to $20,000 and/or one to 10 years incarceration.
Yeager said the bill is needed because predators can possess terabytes of this stuff, which has the same effect as porn using real children but carries no consequences.
“It’s growing at such a rate, it’s becoming extremely hard to combat, so legislation like this helps us with that fight,” she said.
During the last two years, she said, cybertips to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children regarding child sexual abuse material have nearly tripled. The center received 32 million cybertips last year. Not all are about child sexual abuse material, but the vast majority are.
This bill also goes to the full Senate.
On a related but different topic, the House AI Committee approved a bill originating in committee to create an AI task force in the governor’s office. Among its jobs, it would designate a relevant agency to oversee AI policy and develop best practices for the public sector use of artificial intelligence.
It goes to the full House.
Email: dbeard@dominiopost.com
