After hearing from parents, advocates, and law enforcement about the vulnerability of minors to sexual predators, state senators advanced bipartisan legislation aimed at protecting Texas children from online exploitation.
The Senate Committee on Criminal Justice heard public testimony Tuesday on five measures to protect children before voting to send them all to the full Senate for consideration.
State Sen. Pete Flores (R–Pleasanton), who chairs the committee, said the measures “will move our state forward in continuing to aggressively pursue and prosecute those seeking to harm and abuse our children.”
“I think in terms of critical items for this session, I don’t think there’s anything that could be higher on our list of priorities than protecting our children,” added the committee’s vice chair, State Sen. Tan Parker (R–Flower Mound).
Flores highlighted predators’ use of technology to sexually exploit children.
“Technology, whether through AI or other programs, has enabled child predators to produce material that is obviously so offensive that I believe it has absolutely no redeeming value whatsoever. In fact, these materials are often used to groom and abuse children,” he said.
Flores noted that the U.S. Supreme Court held in 1982 that child pornography has no protections under the First Amendment.
“It is not uncommon for the law to have to catch up with technology,” he added. “The bills to be heard today are focused on protecting children from predators, producers, promoters, and enablers of this offensive material.”
Senate Bill 20 would create a new criminal offense for possessing or promoting obscene visual material that appears to depict a child, specifically targeting visual depictions created using artificial intelligence or other computer software. The offense would be a state jail felony.
Flores co-authored SB 20 with five other Republican and Democrat committee members. The measure is one of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s priority bills.
According to Flores, “37 other states, both red and blue, have versions of AI child pornography laws on the books.”
Another measure approved by the committee, Senate Bill 1621, also targets computer-generated images of children being sexually exploited.
Its author, State Sen. Joan Huffman (R–Houston), described SB 1621 as a “delete and rewrite” of the state’s current statutes on “child pornography”—more accurately known as child sexual abuse material.
The bill creates new definitions of “depiction of a child” and “depiction of a computer-generated child” and updates the penalty ranges for various amounts and types of those materials.
Under SB 1621, possession of child sexual abuse material would be a first-degree felony punishable by 25 years to life in prison for repeat offenders, offenders employed by certain facilities for children, and perpetrators who display or cause to be displayed such materials in a school library.
Committee members also approved two measures by State Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa, a Democrat from McAllen, designed to protect victims of all ages who are sexually exploited via artificial intelligence.
Hinojosa said the misuse of AI to create nonconsensual pornographic visual materials—often called “deepfakes”—has grown exponentially, and online searches for “deepfake pornography” increased by 900 percent within two years.
He said women are targeted disproportionately, and victims face severe emotional and reputational harm, compounded by a lack of clear legal remedies.
Senate Bill 441 would add civil liabilities for individuals who solicit, produce, or promote “deepfake porn” without the target’s consent, as well as for owners of websites and AI companies that help produce or disclose the material, and includes a 10-year statute of limitations for victims to sue.
Senate Bill 442 would establish a clear legal definition of “deep fake media” and make distribution of sexually explicit deepfake content without voluntary written consent of the person depicted a Class A misdemeanor.
The committee also approved Senate Bill 412 by State Sen. Mayes Middleton (R–Galveston), which would remove “obscenity exemptions”—loopholes in the law that give schools an affirmative defense to distributing harmful sexual materials to children.
Committee members voted 6-0 to send all five measures to the full Senate for consideration.
Last week, the Senate Committee on Education K-16 heard public testimony on nearly a dozen bills designed to protect parental rights in education, including Patrick-priority measures to affirm parents’ constitutional right to direct their child’s education and strengthen safeguards against sexually explicit books in school libraries.
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