California & AI: CSAM means ALL of it! (AB 1831 & SB 1381)
Updated: 6 days ago
Our Federal government, including SCOTUS, doesn't care about protecting our children... but California does!!!
The Loophole Favoring Child Predators
For years, laws against child sexual abuse material (CSAM) have had a legal loophole. In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down parts of the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996, a federal law that banned "virtual" child pornography. The Court's reasoning was that if no real child was involved in making an image, it counted as protected speech unless it was legally obscene. That ruling, Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, shapes how every state and the federal government can handle this issue today.
That precedent is still in effect now, and in August 2026, in United States v. Anderegg, a federal appeals court ruled that the First Amendment protects privately possessing AI-generated CSAM at home, as long as it doesn't depict a "real child." The judges said their hands were tied by the 2002 ruling, and they urged the Supreme Court to reconsider. (I've written more about that case here.)
Back in 2002, "virtual" mostly meant crude computer graphics. Nobody imagined a world where anyone could type a few words and generate a realistic image in seconds. But AI image generators changed that, and laws written for a different era suddenly had a lot of catching up to do. It's not a victimless gap, either. According to California Assemblymember Marc Berman, the AI models used to create these images were trained on thousands of images of real children being abused, revictimizing those children all over again.
Welcome to The Golden State of AI
In California, however, we care about our children!
In September 2024 ... two YEARS before the despicable (<--my personal feeling about it) ruling of United States v. Anderegg, Governor Newsom signed two bills that closed that gap: AB 1831, carried by Assemblymember Marc Berman, and SB 1381, carried by Senator Aisha Wahab.
Why two bills? They're twins. Each was written so it could only take effect if the other passed, too. Having one author in each house carry matching bills is a common way to move legislation through both chambers. Think of them as one law split across two bills.
What they did was expand California's CSAM laws to include material that's digitally altered or AI-generated. Without the "real child" loophole. That covers creating it, possessing it, and distributing it. And prosecutors don't have to prove the material is "obscene," a legal hurdle that could otherwise have let some cases slip through.
And they didn't leave any wiggle room. The law covers just about every format you can think of: photos, film, video, slides, photocopies, digital files, computer hardware and software, storage media, and any other computer-generated image. It covers AI-generated images of children who don't exist, and real photos that have been digitally altered. It also covers pretty much every way someone could handle this material: producing, possessing, printing, duplicating, publishing, distributing, exchanging, bringing it into California to sell, and showing it to others.
Both bills passed with bipartisan support, and they took effect January 1, 2025.
Heads up: this is where things stood at the time I hit publish on this post. Legislation has a way of shifting after the fact — amendments, court challenges, effective dates moving around — so if this actually affects you, the sources linked below are a good place to check for anything that's changed since.
SOURCES:
AB 1831 Press Release - https://berman.asmdc.org/press-releases/20240929-california-criminalizes-ai-enabled-child-sexual-abuse
AB 1831 Bill Text - https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240AB1831
SB1381 Bill Text - https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240SB1381
Comments