Prosecutors from all 50 states are calling on Congress to pass legislation protecting youths from artificial intelligence child sexual abuse images that have been spreading online.
On Tuesday, the attorneys general from across the United States sent a letter to Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate. They called on federal lawmakers to establish an expert commission to analyze the means and method of artificial intelligence that can be used to exploit specifically children.
AI Child Sexual Abuse Images
They also called on federal lawmakers to expand existing restrictions on child sexual abuse materials specifically to cover AI-generated images. The prosecutors added that they were already engaged in a race against time to protect the nation's children from AI threats.
South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson led the effort to add signatories from all 50 states and four US territories to the letter. Last week, the Republican said that he hoped that federal lawmakers would translate the group's bipartisan support for legislation on the issue into immediate action, as per Newsbreak.
Wilson added that everyone was currently focused on everything that was dividing the entirety of the nation. He said he hopes lawmakers can at least agree on protecting kids from new, innovative, and exploitative technologies.
This year, the Senate has held several hearings on the possible threats of artificial intelligence and related technologies. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in May said that government intervention is crucial to mitigating the risks of increasingly powerful AI systems.
Altman, whose company makes the free chatbot tool ChatGPT, proposed the formation of a US or global agency responsible for licensing the most powerful AI systems. He said it should have the authority to "take that license away and ensure compliance with safety standards.
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Surge of Pedophiles Sharing Indecent Images
Currently, there is no immediate sign that Congress will craft sweeping laws relating to AI, similar to what European lawmakers are doing. However, societal concerns have led American agencies to promise to crack down on harmful AI products that are found to have broken currently existing civil rights and consumer protection laws, according to CBS News.
Furthermore, Wilson said he is encouraging his fellow attorneys general to scour their state statutes for potential areas of concern on top of the federal action they are calling for. He said that they started to question if child exploitation laws currently on the books could keep up with the novelty of the new technologies.
The situation comes as pedophiles have been found to take advantage of artificial intelligence to create and sell life-like child sexual abuse material. Some accessed the images by paying subscription fees to accounts on mainstream content-sharing sites such as Patreon.
The website said it had a "zero tolerance" policy about sharing or selling such imagery on its platform. The National Police Chief's Council also said that it was "outrageous" that some platforms are making "huge profits" but are not taking "moral responsibility," said BBC.
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