BATON ROUGE – State lawmakers say they want to put restrictions in place to protect children after a student was arrested for sharing an explicit photo of another student that was generated using artificial intelligence.
Last month, a Lafourche Parish middle school student was accused of sharing an explicit photo of another student.
“We can’t continue to do business as usual,” said state Sen. Regina Barrow, D-Baton Rouge. “There’s no way we were doing things the way we used to. Those things just don’t work anymore.”
The student, whose likeness was used to create the photo, was later expelled from the school for slapping a student who allegedly shared the photo with another student.
Barrow, who chairs a group focused on women and children at the state Capitol, said she wants stricter regulations when it comes to emerging technologies.
“This is a topic that has come up consistently in the multiple conferences I have attended,” Barrow said. “There’s a lot of pushback from technology companies because they don’t want to be limited in terms of what they can do. We’re not trying to limit them. We’re trying to keep kids safe.”
Barrow said these are the topics he plans to take up in the next legislative session.
