California bill aims to ban AI-generated child pornography

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (KABC) -- A California bill that aims to crack down on AI-generated child pornography made it past an early hurdle in Sacramento Tuesday.

AB 1831 passed through the Assembly's Public Safety Committee hearing and will go before the Privacy and Consumer Protection Committee next week.

The bill is designed to close a loophole in California's current child pornography laws that ban making, distributing or possessing child sexual abuse material as long as it is an actual child, overlooking computer-generated images that may look like a child.

Supporters of the bill say the AI-generated material often uses the faces of actual children and victimizes them when those images are distributed.

"It's absolutely humiliating for these kids to go to school and know that these images have been circulated around campus," said Orange County Sheriff's Department detective Heather Timmins at Tuesday's hearing.

Ventura County District Attorney Erik Nasarenko, a co-sponsor of the new legislation, said this is just another dark side of AI that needs to be handled as soon as possible.

"Those (images) contain real minors, real victims, so AI is by no means victimless simply because it's computer generated," Nasarenko told Eyewitness News. "AB 1831 would ban the creation, distribution and possession of computer-generated or AI generated child sexual abuse material."

Also testifying in the hearing was former Disney Channel child actor Kaylin Hayman. The now 16-year-old told committee members how she received a call from the FBI last year, informing her that AI-generated videos were found with her likeness taking part in sexual activities.

"A man was in possession of images that were morphed to have my face on someone else's body participating in sexual acts," she testified. "I felt violated and disgusted to think about the fact that grown men had seen me in such a horrendous manner."

Several 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 classmates.

A student at Calabasas High School is accused of a similar act and distributing the images to others in the school. And just last week, Laguna Beach High School launched an investigation into one of its students for doing the same.