Gov. Little signs AI-generated porn bill into law
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IDAHO FALLS — A bill designed to make sexually explicit AI-generated images of people illegal is now law in Idaho.
HB 465, sponsored by Rep. Bruce Skaug, R-Nampa, and Rep. Dori Healey, R-Boise, was signed by Gov. Brad Little on March 25 after passing the House and Senate without any opposition.
In January, Skaug told us the main priority with this bill was to protect children from advancements in technology that make pornography easier to produce.
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Skaug is an attorney by profession who has dealt with many “stomach-turning” sex abuse cases over the years. He said “there’s a real problem” with pornography and the ability to create images using artificial intelligence increases the risk of people being targeted.
Before the Idaho legislation was enacted, Skaug said only four states had passed laws against “taking someone’s face and putting it on naked bodies and doing perverted things.” The fact that there was no law in Idaho addressing this motivated him to do something about it.
“I looked at those bills and didn’t like how they were written,” Skaug said.
In a House Judiciary, Rules and Administration Committee hearing on Feb. 7 — where the bill was introduced — Healey provided her perspective on HB 465.
“We live in a world where something creative and likely created for good has been turned into something that has been used for ill intent,” Healey said. “This technology has been used to create hundreds of new images of children who have previously been abused.”
It’s now a “misused software,” she said, and this bill establishes rules for how artificial intelligence is used.
Jared Mendenhall, an Idaho Falls police detective on the state’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, previously told us they are actively investigating sex cases today that involve children and the use of AI.
Though the technology to put someone’s face on another person’s body has been around for a while, he says it’s only within the last year that it’s become difficult to determine whether an image is real or fake.
“Once a closer look is taken, it becomes apparent that (it’s) computer generated,” Mendenhall told the House JRA Committee in February. “The rate that AI is growing, we have a very short amount of time before it’s even possible to tell the difference.”
“This bill will help us protect children,” Mendenhall later added.
Updating the law to outlaw the use of AI to create pornographic images now gives police the ability to investigate it, which is a welcome change to law enforcement.
The bill provides immunity to law enforcement who have access to this type of content during a criminal investigation.
The law will go into effect on July 1.
Watch the House and Senate Committee hearings for HB 465 in the video above.