The new bill expands Pennsylvania’s mandatory reporting law to include AI-generated sexual abuse images of children.
HARRISBURG, Pa. — Sen. James Andrew Malone (D-East Petersburg) introduced a law Friday in Pennsylvania’s Child Abuse Reporting Act that would shut down the law regarding the sharing of deep classes that have been sexually explicitly generated by AI among other minors.
Senate Bill 1034 will update state law to require mandatory reports to report images of sexual abuse involving children, including AI deepfakes, to law enforcement without delay, Malone said.
State Sen. Nikki Rivera (D. Lancaster) introduced fellow laws in the state House of Representatives.
The proposal comes after the 2023 incident at Lancaster Country Day School. There, two male students used artificial intelligence to create sexually explicit deep-fark images of 48 female classmates and 12 other girls. School officials were notified of the abuse but did not report it to authorities for several months.
“As AI is rapidly developing, the threat to children online is constantly evolving,” Malone said in a statement. “Sexually explicit AI deepfakes are a real danger to children, and the law needs to be modernised to address this threat.”
Under Pennsylvania’s Title 23 Act, teachers and other school staff are required to be child abuse reporters. However, current law does not specifically categorize minors who create or share sexually explicit deepfakes of other children as abuse, and Malone said there have not been reports of some cases.
Rivera said the new law aims to fill that gap. “It’s time to update the mandatory reporting laws to protect children in this new digital environment created by AI,” she said. “This update takes seriously the long-term damage caused by deepfakes generated by minors’ sexually explicit AI.”
Advocates say the law will increase protections at a time when cases of child sexual abuse material generated nationwide are on the rise. A recent survey from Thorn, a nonprofit that focuses on online child safety, found that one in teens knows who is targeted by Deepfaki.
Malone said his bill is a “common-sense update” to maintain mandatory reporting laws as technology evolves. “This law will help protect children by ensuring that cases of sexually explicit AI deepfakes spread by other minors are reported immediately to the appropriate authorities,” Malone said.
