Protecting Children from AI Exploitation and Social Media Harm

Children bear an image made in their likeness by a machine. No actual child was present, yet the harm is real: the material is used to groom, to threaten, and to normalize predation. Alaska law has not kept pace with this technology. HB47 closes that gap directly. The American Council urges every member of the Alaska Legislature to pass this bill without delay.

At the center of the bill are two new offenses targeting AI-generated and digitally manipulated child sexual abuse material. Under the new statutes, knowingly distributing, advertising, promoting, or soliciting such material in Alaska is a class B felony, elevated to a class A felony for repeat offenders or those previously convicted of related crimes. Possessing or intentionally accessing it on a computer is a class C felony. The bill applies a Miller-style obscenity test to these depictions and makes clear the offense applies regardless of whether an actual child was used in the material's creation. These are not technical adjustments. They are a direct moral reckoning with an emerging form of exploitation.

The bill also strengthens the underlying framework for prosecuting hands-on exploitation. It adds contact with semen as a defined category of sexual conduct under the unlawful exploitation of a minor statute, incorporates that category into the sexual abuse of a minor in the second degree offense, and extends the enticement-of-a-minor statute to cover enticement toward that same conduct. Prosecutors do not need to prove the act was actually committed for an enticement charge to proceed. These additions ensure that offenders cannot exploit definitional gaps in the existing law.

The bill is careful to protect the people who work hardest to combat this material. Employees and contractors of internet service providers, cloud service providers, interactive computer services, and telecommunications networks are explicitly exempted from the new possession offense when they access or possess the material solely to prevent, detect, report, or respond to its production. That exemption reflects a grounded understanding of how this material is actually identified and removed from the internet. We should not criminalize the work of those fighting it.

A rebuttable presumption that possession of 100 or more covered items constitutes prima facie evidence of intent to distribute gives prosecutors a workable threshold without removing the defendant's ability to contest the inference. The bill also tidies existing law by clarifying that conduct already covered by the unlawful exploitation statute is carved out of the harassment offenses, preventing duplicative charging and ensuring clean, consistent application of the criminal code. Every provision works together toward a single purpose: protecting children from a rapidly evolving category of abuse. The American Council calls on Alaska's legislators to pass HB47.