Louisiana Leads On Outlawing Pedophile Deepfakes
On Friday, Louisiana became the first state to outlaw the creation of deep faked sexually explicit materials involving children leading the way in protecting children from having their images and any images derived from them exploited. The new law will find violators facing between five and twenty years in prison, a $10,000 fine, or both. Those who sell or advertise these materials will face even steeper sentences.
According to Gizmodo, SB175 the new law makes it a crime to either knowingly create or possess “an AI-generated image or video depicting a person under the age of 18 engaged in a sexual act.” The bill was signed into law by Democrat Governor John Bel Edwards and is slated to take effect on August 1st. Other states are working to adopt similar legislation to cutoff the evolution of deep fake abuse but the law from Louisiana is a first-in-the-nation strike at the heart of the matter targeting the abuse of minors specifically and decisively.
The bill introduced by Republican State Senator Jeremy Stine, referred to the bill in an April statement as legislation to “protect our children from digital predators.”
The law states,
"Any person who, with knowledge that the material is a deepfake depicting a minor, knowingly creates or possesses material that depicts a minor engaging in sexual conduct shall be punished by imprisonment at hard labor for not less than five nor more than twenty years, or a fine of not more than ten thousand dollars, or both. At least five years of the sentence of imprisonment imposed shall be served without benefit of parole, probation or suspension of sentence.”
Furthermore, the bill particularly targets any person or platform that “knowingly advertises, distributes, exhibits, exchanges with, promotes, or sells any sexual material that depicts a minor engaging in sexual conduct shall be punished by imprisonment at hard labor for not less than ten nor more than thirty years, a fine of not more than fifty thousand dollars, or both. At least ten years of the sentence of imprisonment imposed shall be served without benefit of probation, parole, or suspension of sentence.”
News of the bill was shared by Human Trafficking Victim advocate Eliza Bleu via Twitter,
In a follow-up tweet, Bleu referred to existing federal law 18 U.S.C. § 2251 which appears to concur referring to, “Visual depictions include photographs, videos, digital or computer generated images indistinguishable from an actual minor, and images created, adapted, or modified, but appear to depict an identifiable, actual minor.”