CONGRESS TO STUDY AI’S IMPACT ON CHILD PORNOGRAPHY

OKLAHOMA CITY –

Oklahoma’s Attorney General has joined his counterparts from every other state to urge Congress to study the consequences of artificial intelligence on child pornography.

In the letter the Attorney General wrote, it said in part, “While internet crimes against children are already being actively prosecuted, we are concerned that AI is creating a new frontier for abuse that makes such prosecution more difficult.”

CBS technology contributor Craig Agranoff shared with affiliate WPEC that the new consumer availability of AI-powered tools has increased the scale of the issue.

“It’s extremely disturbing and very troubling because anytime something comes out, you’re going to have these bad actors who use it for bad things and in this case, it’s going to be used for the most disgusting things, and it has to do with child sexual abuse material,” he said.

Oklahoma’s Attorney General, Gentner Drummond, said one of the issues troubling prosecutors is the loophole used by defense counsel — claiming or indicating that AI-generated child pornography does not have a real victim. But, Drummond explained that in many cases real children are edited into exploitive photographs but depicted in positions or circumstances which did not exist.

“If there was never a child being exploited, but yet, there’s an image of a child being exploited – that’s the gap that we have to close through legislation,” he said.

Although the letter urges action at the federal level, Drummond also believes action is needed at the state level.

“The tragedy is that social media has become so prevalent, so parents, grandparents, in good faith, are posting pictures of their children on social media, and the perverts are capturing those images and using artificial intelligence to create child sex abuse material,” Drummond added.