As artificial intelligence continues its rapid transformation of the digital landscape, Alaska lawmakers are working on a bill to crack down on the creation, possession and distribution of synthetically generated child pornography.
On Friday, House Bill 47 advanced out of the House Judiciary Committee. Sponsored by Rep. Sarah Vance (R-Homer), it aims to address the reality that AI is increasingly used to generate sexualized depictions of children, which are now indistinguishable from real images.
This issue came to light last summer when an Army soldier stationed at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage was arrested on charges of transporting, receiving, and possessing child sexual abuse material, including some that were AI-generated.
At that time, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco warned that cutting-edge generative AI is accelerating the proliferation of child sexual abuse material which utilizes and manipulates images of real children.
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To address this emerging threat, HB 47 expands Alaska’s criminal laws to include wholly generated obscene images of children – images that, while synthetic, are nevertheless indistinguishable from real children and meet the criteria for obscenity under the Miller Test, thus falling outside the protections of the First Amendment.
The stated goals behind HB 47 are to protect vulnerable individuals from exploitation, uphold justice for crimes that exploit the likeness of children – even in synthetic forms – and maintain societal integrity by ensuring accountability for those who create and distribute such material.
