This week, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody called on Congress to study artificial intelligence and the technology’s potential harmful effects on children.
Moody, along with 53 other attorneys general, urged congressional leaders to establish a commission to examine AI more fully and how it is being used to exploit children through child sexual abuse material and to propose legislation to protect children from those abuses.
“The rapid onset of artificial intelligence is raising concerns about how child predators may use the high-tech tool to prey on minors. We need a full congressional investigation into the capabilities of AI and what we can do to reduce the ability of predators to exploit this tool to harm children,” said Moody.
Moody and the coalition are concerned with the dangers of AI as it relates to CSAM in three main categories: a real child’s likeness who has not been physically abused being digitally altered in a depiction of abuse, a real child who has been physically abused being digitally recreated in other depictions of abuse, and a child who does not even exist being digitally created in a depiction of abuse that feeds the market for CSAM.
In a letter to congressional leaders, the coalition stated, “AI is also being used to generate child sexual abuse material (CSAM). For example, AI tools can rapidly and easily create ‘deepfakes’ by studying real photographs of abused children to generate new images showing those children in sexual positions. This involves overlaying the face of one person on the body of another. Deepfakes can also be generated by overlaying photographs of otherwise unvictimized children on the internet with photographs of abused children to create new CSAM involving the previously unharmed children.”
Moody and the coalition asked Congress to form a commission to study specifically how AI can be used to exploit children and to “act to deter and address child exploitation, such as by expanding existing restrictions on CSAM to explicitly cover AI-generated CSAM.”
The letter continued, “We are engaged in a race against time to protect the children of our country from the dangers of AI. Indeed, the proverbial walls of the city have already been breached. Now is the time to act.”
Moody was joined by the attorneys general of the following states and territories in signing the letter: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Northern Mariana Islands, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, U.S. Virgin Islands, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
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