According to KNWA, the Benton County Police Department said Carey could only be charged in affiliation with material containing real children. Arkansas is one of many states that require the child victimized to be a natural person.
With only 13 U.S. states holding legislation that criminalizes nonconsensual AI generation, advocacy groups and legislators are teaming up to help bring about change.
Arkansas Senator Joshua Bryant said he hopes to create and pass legislation that will classify the possession of AI-generated CSAM as a crime. The problem lies in the definition of a child under Arkansas’ statute on "distributing, possessing or viewing of matter depicting sexually explicit conduct involving a child." In June 2023, the Arkansas Supreme Court reversed the convictions against Jeremy Lewis on 11 counts of possession of CSAM because the images were computer-generated imagery (CGI) and did not incorporate the image of Arkansas’ definition of a child.
“We have in our statute that if someone draws a sexually explicit cartoon and passes it off, that’s illegal,” Bryant said. “They would violate decency laws with that. Yet, if someone opens their computer and they have an AI-generated sexual act with an AI-generated child, that wouldn’t constitute a criminal act.”
Bryant said he believes most people would agree that AI-generated CSAM with a fake child is equally as horrendous as if it was a live child.
AI-generated CSAM has quickly become a greater concern of watch groups as technology advances. According to the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), its analysts found 11,108 AI-generated images on a dark web CSAM forum in one month. “That’s one of the reasons I think we need to really talk about this as a society,” Bryant said. “We have to figure out how to address it because it’s just going to continue to be something that hangs over us.”
In a statement on safety and usage policies, officials of OpenAI, the owner of ChatGPT and popular image generation software DALL-E 2, said they report apparent CSAM to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and that violating their safety policies will result in action against your account.
Bryant said he is working with a team of prosecutors, judges and advocates for children to present his legislation in the January 2025 legislative session. Omny Miranda Martone of Washington D.C. is the founder and CEO of the Sexual Violence Prevention Association (SVPA) and is an endorser of the DEFIANCE Act of 2024.
