Lawmakers must stand up to protect our communities in the digital age

In communities across our state, we have heard from school administrators and parents who are left confronting a disturbing new challenge. Artificial intelligence tools are being used to create fabricated explicit images of students using nothing more than ordinary photographs pulled from social media.

The issue is now much further widespread than some might even imagine. A recent study from the child safety group THORN found that one in ten minors know friends and classmates who have created deepfake nudes of other children. One platform for this that has drawn a lot of recent scrutiny is Grok, the massively popular AI tool that is a part of X.

At the start of the year, the headlines were flooded with news that the technology was being used to create sexually explicit images of real people without their consent, including minors. At its height, reporting shows that Grok was generating around 6,700 sexualized images every hour.

Across the country, law enforcement agencies and school administrators are encountering situations where these AI tools are creating these fabricated images without consent and showing up in their schools. In some cases, those images spread through messaging apps or group chats before victims even know they exist.

The impact on families can be immediate and severe, and the ramifications are seemingly worsening by the day. The non-profit Internet Watch Foundation found that 2025 was the worst year on record for online child sexual abuse material, citing a 26,362% rise in photo-realistic AI videos of child sexual abuse.

That’s why we co-sponsored two vital digital safety bills last session in the Arkansas General Assembly. The goal of our legislation is to ensure that the exploitation of minors and the misuse of someone’s likeness for explicit purposes should not be tolerated. We believe that legislators have a responsibility to examine whether emerging technologies create new gaps in enforcement or accountability, and to close these gaps when needed.

Arkansas should not turn away from innovation, and artificial intelligence will continue to play an important role in agriculture, business development, and research across our state. However, responsible innovation requires foresight and effective guardrails to ensure that people, especially children, are protected alongside progress.

Companies that design and deploy generative AI systems should ensure those technologies include safeguards capable of preventing misuse, particularly when minors are among the potential users. Policymakers should review whether existing statutes clearly address AI-generated non-consensual imagery and whether enforcement agencies and attorneys general have the tools necessary to respond when abuse occurs.

This is not a partisan issue. Protecting children and families has always been a shared responsibility in Arkansas and ensuring that innovation does not come at the expense of basic protections for our communities is a responsibility lawmakers must take seriously.

Editor’s note: The authors of this guest commentary are Sen. Tyler Dees, R-Siloam Springs, and Rep. Jon Eubanks, R-Paris. The opinions expressed are those of the authors.