SPRINGFIELD — Illinois legislators have been looking at how state law needs to adapt to address the advent of artificial intelligence and its influence on society, and on Tuesday, the discussion focused on legislation related to Internet sex crimes against children.
At a House committee hearing, lawmakers debated a measure that would prohibit the use of AI technology to create child pornography, regardless of whether it involved real children or fake images that evoke obscene imagery.
The measure, which ultimately passed through the House Judiciary Criminal Committee, is being pushed by Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul. Its main sponsor is state Rep. Jennifer Gong-Gershowitz, a Glenview Democrat who has been working on ways to have state law keep up with the new technology.
During the hearing, Gong-Gershowitz said this AI content is “quickly” reaching a point of being indiscernible from authentic child pornography images.
“The mass creation of AI-generated child pornography material will only make it more difficult for law enforcement to stop child trafficking,” she told the panel. “Law enforcement will not only have to deal with the sheer volume of … content, but also identifying that the content depicts a real child or is the sole creation of AI. And while no real child may have been harmed at the AI-generated content, it normalizes abusive behavior, namely when it purports to depict sexual abuse of a child.”
David Haslett, chief of the attorney general’s office’s high-tech crimes bureau, testified that AI could make it more difficult for law enforcement to bring charges of child pornography because of confusion over whether images were real or computer-generated.
“How is the system going to deal with this when we cannot prove that it is a real child because it’s not?” Haslett asked. “We’re trying to be proactive about this so that when AI does become indistinguishable from a real product, that it does not flood the market and present this material being everywhere and then we can’t stop it.”
The measure amends the state’s child pornography law to include depictions of children under 18 “who by manipulation, creation, or modification, appears to be engaged in sexual activity.” It defines an “obscene depiction” as a visual representation that includes an image, video, computer-generated image or video, “whether made, produced, or altered by electronic, mechanical, or other means.”
