In short
Minnesota lawmakers handed a invoice banning AI instruments that generate pretend nude photos.
Violators resist $500,000 per use and potential triple damages.
The regulation retains Part 230 protections and can takes impact August 1 if signed into regulation.
Minnesota lawmakers have handed a invoice aimed toward stopping a rising type of AI abuse by concentrating on the platforms that allow it.
On Thursday, the Minnesota Senate voted 65-0 to cross Home File 1606, sending it to Governor Tim Walz for his signature. The measure bars web sites and apps from providing instruments that generate real looking pretend nude photos of identifiable individuals.
Beneath the invoice, firms that management an internet site, app, or software program service can’t permit customers to entry or use instruments to create these photos or generate them on a person’s behalf. Promoting or selling such companies can be prohibited.
The measure permits victims to sue the individuals or firms that function or management nudification instruments, equivalent to web sites, apps, or software program that generate pretend nude photos. Individuals depicted in AI-generated nude photos can search damages, together with for psychological anguish, and courts can award as much as thrice the precise damages, together with punitive damages, lawyer charges, and orders to cease the conduct.
The invoice additionally provides the state lawyer normal the facility to implement the regulation, with civil penalties of as much as $500,000 per use. Based on the invoice, these penalties are directed into the state’s normal fund after which appropriated to sufferer companies, together with assist for survivors of sexual assault, home violence, and youngster abuse.
The invoice targets instruments that require little technical experience and have turn into extensively accessible, together with to minors. If signed, the regulation takes impact August 1 and applies to new instances from that date ahead.
Whereas the brand new invoice doesn’t reference a single AI developer, the information comes after a sequence of high-profile incidents on the social platform X, together with in August 2025, when Elon Musk’s xAI device, Grok, generated nude deepfakes of Taylor Swift. The pop famous person moved to trademark her voice and likeness with the U.S. Patent Workplace in April, maybe in a transfer to go off future AI reproductions.
Musk can be dealing with mounting authorized stress, together with a federal class motion lawsuit filed by three Tennessee minors alleging Grok generated youngster sexual abuse materials from their photos. Additionally, a shopper safety lawsuit from town of Baltimore claims the corporate knowingly deployed a system that produces and spreads nonconsensual sexualized content material, together with of minors.
Public Citizen co-president Robert Weissman mentioned the unfold of those instruments displays how rapidly AI has lowered the barrier to creating nonconsensual intimate imagery and expanded its attain.
“These apps are 99% concentrating on ladies, over 90% of whom are below 18. It’s a device of intimidation and harassment of girls with actually extreme psychological penalties,” Weissman advised Decrypt. “You’ve seen this throughout the nation and the world. So the necessity for presidency intervention and regulation is acute.”
Weissman added that state-level legal guidelines can play a task alongside federal efforts, particularly relating to enforcement. He mentioned native authorities could also be higher positioned to behave rapidly in particular person instances, whereas federal companies could not prioritize or pursue them in any respect.
The Minnesota regulation additionally comes throughout an ongoing struggle between President Donald Trump’s administration and states over who ought to management AI regulation. The Take It Down Act, signed into regulation by President Donald Trump in Could 2025, criminalizes the distribution of nonconsensual intimate photos and gives victims a path to hunt civil damages.
“I believe having complementary federal and state requirements is optimistic, notably in concept. We’re speaking about totally different enforcement programs and enforcement companies,” Weissman mentioned. “So that you might need a federal customary, however you may not have federal capability to do enforcement actions.”
The workplace of Governor Walz didn’t instantly reply to Decrypt’s request for remark.
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