Maine lawmakers are restarting an effort to ban the creation and distribution of AI-generated child sexual abuse material ahead of the next legislative session in January.
Lawmakers weighed a ban last session but abandoned the idea over concerns it was unconstitutional. They decided to reintroduce the legislation with modifications after the Bangor Daily News reported this fall on how current law allows the computer-generated images to spread unchecked.
The proposed legislation, which will get a committee hearing next Friday, would bring Maine in line with 28 states that ban the creation of AI-generated child sexual abuse material. The BDN’s reporting showed how the gap in current law leaves police unable to investigate these types of images, a problem they have encountered and felt powerless to stop.
“The Legislature needs to act on it now, because it is a problem that Maine is facing in this moment,” said Shira Burns, executive director of the Maine Prosecutors’ Association, who helped create the bill.
Despite child sexual abuse material having been illegal for decades under both federal and state law, the rapid development of generative AI — which uses models to create new content based on user prompts — means Maine law does not define computer-generated images.
Increasingly, law enforcement and organizations like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children are getting tips related to AI-generated materials. In September, Maine State Police Lt. Jason Richards, the commanding officer of the Computer Crimes Unit, told the BDN his team is seeing more of the material and can’t touch it.
The first iteration of the bill Rep. Amy Kuhn, D-Falmouth, proposed earlier this year may not have withstood a challenge on constitutional grounds. The challenge most states have faced is that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 2002 case that “virtual child pornography,” which means pornography that is made by adults pretending to be a child or under 18, is legal and protected speech under the First Amendment.
As a result, the legal threshold for determining whether something is child sexual abuse material is that the child must be identifiable. With AI-generated content, it is not always clear that a real, identifiable child was involved.
Kuhn’s new version of the bill “carefully thread[s] the needle” when it comes to avoiding a constitutional conflict because it would classify the content as “obscene,” which is not protected by the First Amendment, Riana Pfefferkorn, a policy fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI, said.
The new bill will get a hearing in front of the Judiciary Committee next Friday and could face votes after the Legislature reconvenes in January. Republicans led by House Minority Leader Rep. Billy Bob Faulkingham, R-Winter Harbor, criticized Democratic leaders who declined to allow a new bill in for next year’s session aimed at banning these images, but Kuhn’s revision was already in the works.
Through a spokesperson, Faulkingham declined to say whether he supports that bill, but he reiterated through a spokesperson that he supports making AI-generated child sexual abuse images illegal.
“AI child pornography is not a victimless crime. It is a sick abhorrent act, that allows predators to play out an evil fantasy that should be rejected not supported. It is important that we outlaw and weed out any type of child exploitation, even AI generated,” Faulkingham said in a statement.
