South Dakota’s Attorney General is outlining the main crime-related issues he’d like the legislature to act on.
That includes a bill addressing a new technology and its potential use for child pornography.
Attorney General Marty Jackley said there are five main topics he wants to see legislators act on. One area of concern is that deepfake child pornography currently has no legal repercussion in the state.
“It’s a rising concern nationally as well as in South Dakota. The Attorney General and the DCI have been involved in about a half-dozen various investigations across the state. And because we do not have an AI child porn statute in place. They’ve either gone unprosecuted or they’ve been directed to federal authorities,” said Jackley.
He said deepfake creators can take images or video from any publicly posted sites. This includes popular apps like Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram. They can then use AI to generate pornography from these images.
“So you could imagine how upset a parent or grandparent would be if they did a nice posting of their son or daughter, and the next thing you know, that visual is in child pornography," said Jackley. "So that is really what this is aimed at. It would make it just like any other child pornography. So if it involves a child it would be a class four felony which carries up to a maximum of ten-year penalty.”
Jackley said another area his office is focused on is scheduling xylazine as a class three drug.
“Several of us attorneys general are working with our governors, working with our legislators, to schedule them as a scheduled drug so that it can still be used by the ag community, but it can’t be possessed by the drug dealers and used to cut fentanyl,” said Jackley.
Jackley said making xylazine a class three drug would make a prescription from a veterinarian the only legal way to possess the drug.
He said this will cut down on street usage and allow law enforcement to act.
The other subjects in the AG’s suggested legislative package are updating the state’s sex offender registry, allowing the deputy state’s attorneys to serve on open meeting commissions, and a 24/7 fentanyl testing program.
