Minnesota bill aims to criminalize AI-generated child abuse images
News | Published on April 22, 2025 at 2:56pm GMT+0000 | Author: Tucker Henderson
0Samantha Siedow
Report for Minnesota
In a push to expand protections against child exploitation as technology advances, the Minnesota Legislature is considering passing a bill to tackle the rise of artificial intelligence-generated child sexual abuse material and child-like sex dolls.
Currently, it is not illegal in Minnesota to use artificial intelligence (AI) to create images of child sexual abuse or to own sex dolls modeled after children.
SF 1577, sponsored by Sen. Judy Seeberger, DFL-Afton, would amend the state’s sex offender registry laws and sex crime punishments to include those who create, possess or distribute AI-generated child sexual abuse material. The bill also proposes legal restrictions on the possession of sex dolls resembling children under the age of 12.
The bill was written with the guidance of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA), including Superintendent Drew Evans, and is currently included in the omnibus crime bill before the Senate Judiciary and Public Safety Committee.
“Protecting our children from sexual predators, this needs to be a collective thing that we all do together,” Evans said in an interview. “That means that parents need to talk to their children so that they’re not exploited online. That means we put laws like this in place to protect them from those who wish to harm our children.”
The BCA has seen an alarming increase in tips related to AI-generated child sexual abuse images in the last few years, according to Evans.
Evans said the BCA believes individuals who consume AI-generated child sexual abuse material or use child-like sex dolls are more likely to escalate to committing actual abuse against children.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which collects tips about child sexual abuse material nationwide, referred about 1,800 tips to Minnesota authorities in 2017, according to the BCA. That number increased more than tenfold to 12,595 in 2024.
For this year, as of April 13 2025, 4,370 tips had already been reported in the state.
The bill comes amid a national trend of states that have updated laws governing child sexual abuse material, criminalizing digitally created or altered child sexual abuse imagery and sex dolls modeled after children.
If the bill passes, Minnesota would join several other states that have criminalized child-like sex dolls, including Washington, Florida, Hawaii, Arizona, Kentucky, Tennessee and South Dakota.
In 2024, Alabama, California, Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and South Dakota passed legislation to include AI-generated content in their child sexual abuse imagery statutes.
According to Seeberger, the bill aims not only to address the immoral nature of AI-generated abuse material but also to close potential legal loopholes.
“The problem is that AI is getting so good, it’s difficult sometimes to tell what’s real and what’s not real,” Seeberger said. “So the concern is that we didn’t want it to be a defense if someone had some realistic-looking child sexual abuse material for them to say, ‘Oh, it’s just AI.’”
In the 2023-24 legislative session, Seeberger sponsored a similar bill, focusing on child-like sex dolls without mention of AI-generated images. The bill died in committee, but Seeberger said she remains hopeful that her current bill will pass this session.
“I think there’s heightened awareness even since the last session and the session before that into the role that artificial intelligence is playing in our lives,” Seeberger said.
Report for Minnesota is a project of the University of Minnesota’s Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication to support local news in all areas of the state.