Rep. Jason Knight, a Barrington Democrat, is seen at a March 2024 committee hearing. Knight is th lead sponsor of a 2025 bill to outlaw computer-generated nudes of real people. (Photo by Alexander Castro/Rhode Island Current)
Rhode Island’s House of Representatives Thursday voted 61-7 to approve legislation that would outlaw the creation and dissemination of pornography generated by artificial intelligence.
The bill sponsored by Rep. Jason Knight, a Barrington Democrat, would update the state’s existing revenge porn law enacted in 2018 to include synthetic nudes of real people, also known as deepfakes.
“Victims of technically enabled sexual exploitation have no involvement in the making of any of this material and of course, gave no consent,” Knight said in a statement. “Once the images are shared, there’s no way to take them back, so the harm is permanent.”
Rhode Island’s existing revenge porn law makes posting an intimate image without a person’s consent a misdemeanor with a sentence of up to one year in prison and a fine of $1,000. Repeat offenders face up three years in prison and a fine of up to $3,000.
Those who post sexually explicit content to extort people into paying money to remove the explicit content under the existing law — a practice commonly referred to as “sextortion” — face up to five years in prison and $5,000 fine.
“Without question, deepfake porn is a heinous criminal act, and it should be subject to the laws that prohibit the distribution of sexually exploitative material,” Knight said.
The House passed a similar bill by Knight last May to add AI generated images to the revenge porn law, but the bill never made it out of committee in the Senate.
Knight’s latest bill was first heard by the House Committee on Judiciary on Feb. 4, where it received written support from the Rhode Island Coalition Against Domestic Violence.
“Technology is a weapon that people who use violence wield to maintain control over their victims,” Coalition Director Lucy Rios wrote. “Survivors in our communities deserve clear and strong legal protections against these growing threats of technology.”
But the bill has sparked serious warnings from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Rhode Island and the state’s Office of the Public Defender. In its written testimony, the ACLU argued the law could violate the First Amendment and make it illegal to publish newsworthy photos involving nudity.
Assistant Public Defender Megan F. Jackson wrote that the definition of what exactly constitutes a deepfake is unclear in the bill and could result in arbitrary enforcement.
“For this legislation to not run afoul of the due process guarantees of both the state and federal constitutions it must provide ordinary citizens with fair warning of what is unlawful to enable them to conform their conduct to the law,” Jackson wrote.
As defined in Knight’s bill, deepfakes are created by a digital device or altered by digitalization created without consent of the person depicted.
Knight’s bill now heads to the Senate for consideration, where it is scheduled for a floor introduction and eventual hearing before that chamber’s Judiciary Committee. Companion legislation sponsored by Sen. Andrew R. Dimitri, a Johnston Democrat, has yet to be scheduled for a committee hearing.
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