SACRAMENTO, Calif. (KABC) — A California bill aimed at cracking down on AI-generated child pornography cleared an early hurdle in Sacramento on Tuesday.
AB 1831 passed a hearing in the Assembly Public Safety Committee and will be referred to the Privacy and Consumer Protection Committee next week.
This bill aims to close a loophole in California's current child pornography law that prohibits the production, distribution, and possession of child sexual abuse material as long as it is an actual child and appears to be a child. Computer-generated images are ignored.
Supporters of the bill argue that AI-generated materials frequently use real children's faces, and that these images are being distributed at the expense of children.
Orange County Sheriff's Department Detective Heather Timmins said during Tuesday's hearing, “It's absolutely humiliating to know that kids are attending school and these images were circulated on campus.” Ta.
Ventura County District Attorney Eric Nasarenko, a co-sponsor of the new bill, said this is another dark side of AI that needs to be addressed as soon as possible.
“They (images) contain real minors, real victims, and just because they're computer-generated doesn't mean the AI is victimless,” Nasarenko told Eyewitness. told the news. “AB 1831 prohibits the creation, distribution, and possession of computer- or AI-generated child sexual abuse material.”
Former Disney Channel child actress Kaylin Heyman also testified at the hearing. Now 16, she told her committee members that she received a call from the FBI last year informing her that an AI-generated video of her participating in a sexual act had been discovered. She talked about her background.
“A man was in possession of a doctored image that showed my face on the body of another person participating in a sexual act,” she testified. “I felt humiliated and disgusted by the fact that grown men treated me so badly.”
Multiple sexual abuse cases involving artificial intelligence have surfaced in Southern California. Last month, five eighth-graders were expelled from Beverly Vista Middle School in Beverly Hills for using AI to create nude images of their classmates.
A student at Calabasas High School is accused of doing the same thing and distributing the images to other students at the school. And just last week, Laguna Beach High School opened an investigation into one of its students who did the same thing.
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