The Alaska House unanimously passed a prohibition on AI-generated child sexual abuse material on Friday, a longtime priority for a conservative Homer lawmaker. Lawmakers greatly expanded the scope of the bill just before passing it, including by adding provisions that would severely limit children’s access to social media.
House Bill 47 started with a simple concept: to update state laws against child sexual abuse material — what used to be called child pornography — to cover images created with artificial intelligence.
Homer Republican Rep. Sarah Vance said it was an effort to address a gap in state law.
“Currently in statute, you have to prove the harm of an actual child,” she said. “What this bill does is say that anything that is generated obscene material of minors will be criminalized to the same level as if it were a real child.”
The bill had broad, bipartisan support.
“AI is moving forward at lightning speed. Alaska is behind the curveball,” Democratic Anchorage Rep. Andrew Gray said. “We really need guardrails as quickly as possible to protect children, first and foremost, but all of us.”
The new bill goes beyond protecting children. Thanks to a series of amendments, mostly from Democratic Anchorage Rep. Zack Fields, it now also includes restrictions on the ways adults can be depicted with AI.
One change makes it a crime to create a synthetic sexual image of a real-life person. He pointed to a recent incident in which Elon Musk’s xAI allowed users of its AI system, Grok, to create digitally “undressed” images without the subjects’ consent, which prompted an investigation from European Union regulators.
“I agree with the underlying bill. I also don't think that perverts should be able to create obscene sexual material about a 19-year-old,” Fields said.
Another amendment from Fields expands that further, making it a misdemeanor to harass or threaten someone using what the bill calls a “forged digital likeness” — sometimes called a deepfake. Fields says it’s an effort to combat so-called deepfake revenge porn.
A separate amendment from another member attempts to hold AI companies liable for $1 million per occurrence if their systems are used to create child sexual abuse material.
Lawmakers added those to the bill without much discussion or objection, though Vance raised concerns that the restrictions had to be narrowly tailored to pass First Amendment scrutiny.
But another addition to the bill drew more significant bipartisan pushback: an expansive package restricting children’s use of social media.
It covers a lot. Anyone under 18 in Alaska would need permission from a parent or guardian to sign up for an account on a social platform, and the bill would give parents full access to their children’s accounts. Children would have a 10:30 p.m. social media curfew set by default.
The package would also prevent platforms from advertising to minors or using any algorithm to feed them content based on who they are or their interests. It would also outlaw what the bill calls “addictive features” — something that rewards “excessive or compulsive” use of social media.
Fields pitched the social media restrictions as a public safety issue, pointing to the recent arrest of a legislative staffer accused of enticing and exploiting children via Snapchat.
Additionally, Fields said, it’s an effort to reduce social media companies’ influence on children.
“I think the fundamental question with this amendment is, do parental rights supersede the rights of predators? And do parental rights supersede the rights of multinational corporations, which, as we have heard, knowingly target children with addictive, destructive algorithms?” he said.
Fields said he took inspiration from a similar proposal in Utah. More than a dozen other states have passed versions of what Fields proposed. Many have faced successful legal challenges from the tech industry on First Amendment grounds, though the Supreme Court last year allowed a Mississippi law restricting children’s access to social media to remain in effect during a pending challenge, signaling the high court may be open to some similar limits.
Fields’ social media proposal drew bipartisan criticism when it was introduced Wednesday, though none of the criticism led lawmakers to oppose the bill as a whole.
Some lawmakers raised privacy issues — for instance, how do you tell if someone is over 18, or that they’re someone’s parent? Others said the restrictions could be easily bypassed with widely available tools like virtual private networks, which conceal the source of internet traffic, or that the limits could infringe on minors’ First Amendment rights.
Rep. Dan Saddler, an Eagle River Republican, said he was worried the package of social media restrictions could lead the bill to stall as it heads to the Senate.
“If I could cast a single vote, make all these things happen to be law and be effective, I would do it in a heartbeat, twice if I could,” Saddler said. “But I fear that this is such a large issue that it imperils bogging down the rest of the good work that's in this bill.”
It wouldn’t be the first time. In 2024, a bill that would’ve required pornographic websites to verify users’ ages stalled in the Senate after House lawmakers added restrictions on children’s use of social media.
But Vance, the original sponsor, said she’s not worried. She was one of a chorus of House lawmakers on Friday who called on the Senate to fine-tune the bill before passing it into law.
“We've been working on this issue for quite a few years, and I know that there are members of the (Senate), specifically on (the Judiciary Committee), who will be moving forward on at least some of these measures,” she said.
