Minnesota Moves to Ban AI Apps That Generate Fake Nude Images

Minnesota lawmakers have handed a invoice aimed toward stopping a rising type of AI abuse by focusing on the platforms that allow it.

On Thursday, the Minnesota Senate voted 65-0 to go House File 1606, sending it to Governor Tim Walz for his signature. The measure bars web sites and apps from providing instruments that generate sensible pretend nude photos of identifiable folks.

Underneath the invoice, firms that management a web site, app, or software program service can not enable customers to entry or use instruments to create these photos or generate them on a person’s behalf. Promoting or selling such companies can also be prohibited.

The measure permits victims to sue the folks or firms that function or management nudification instruments, corresponding 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, legal professional charges, and orders to cease the conduct.

The invoice additionally offers the state legal professional common the ability to implement the legislation, with civil penalties of as much as $500,000 per use. In keeping with the invoice, these penalties are directed into the state’s common fund after which appropriated to sufferer companies, together with help for survivors of sexual assault, home violence, and baby abuse.

The invoice targets instruments that require little technical experience and have change into extensively accessible, together with to minors. If signed, the legislation takes impact August 1 and applies to new circumstances from that date ahead.

Whereas the brand new invoice doesn’t reference a single AI developer, the information comes after a collection 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 celebrity moved to trademark her voice and likeness with the U.S. Patent Workplace in April, maybe in a transfer to move off future AI reproductions.

Musk can also be dealing with mounting authorized strain, together with a federal class action lawsuit filed by three Tennessee minors alleging Grok generated baby sexual abuse materials from their photos. Additionally, a client safety lawsuit from the 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 shortly AI has lowered the barrier to creating nonconsensual intimate imagery and expanded its attain.

“These apps are 99% focusing on girls, over 90% of whom are below 18. It’s a device of intimidation and harassment of ladies with actually extreme psychological penalties,” Weissman informed 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 job alongside federal efforts, particularly with regards to enforcement. He mentioned native authorities could also be higher positioned to behave shortly in particular person circumstances, whereas federal businesses could not prioritize or pursue them in any respect.

The Minnesota legislation additionally comes throughout an ongoing battle between President Donald Trump’s administration and states over who ought to management AI regulation. The Take It Down Act, signed into legislation by President Donald Trump in Could 2025, criminalizes the distribution of nonconsensual intimate photos and supplies victims a path to hunt civil damages.

“I feel having complementary federal and state requirements is constructive, notably in concept. We’re speaking about completely different enforcement methods and enforcement businesses,” Weissman mentioned. “So that you may need a federal customary, however you won’t have federal capability to do enforcement actions.”

The workplace of Governor Walz didn’t instantly reply to Decrypt’s request for remark.