As Louisville teacher faces child porn charges, Kentucky lawmakers target AI-altered images
FRANKFORT — Lt. Mike Bowling, commander of Kentucky State Police’s Internet Crimes Against Children Taskforce, came to a House committee meeting in late January with a warning.
“AI is here,” he said, referring to artificial intelligence. And deepfake images it can produce are “extremely, extremely dangerous.”
His words rang true last week, when a teacher and maintenance employee at a Catholic school in Louisville was charged with creating and distributing child pornography using images from a class yearbook.
The suspect in that case, 39-year-old Jordan A. Fautz, is facing federal charges. And the bill that advanced in the Kentucky legislature Monday would add language to existing law to ensure it’s a state crime as well.
House Bill 207, from Rep. Stephanie Dietz, R-Edgewood, would also make possessing or trafficking child sex dolls felony offenses. She acknowledged the Friday arrest in a speech on the House floor.
"Just this weekend, the bill's a little closer to home," Dietz said. "My family is aware of one of the victims."
Dietz said the bill will "close a loophole that has allowed pedophiles" to victimize children. A prosecutor she knows brought child sex dolls to her attention recently when he told her he'd seen a case against an accused child predator fall apart because possession of them isn't currently a crime.
The bill gained unanimous support in the state House and will now move to the Senate for consideration.
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Fautz, the suspect in the Louisville case, was charged with distributing obscene visual representations of child sexual abuse and distributing child pornography. He faces up to 40 years in prison if convicted, without the option of parole, and is due in federal court Tuesday afternoon.
Fautz was working at St. Stephen Martyr School at the time of the arrest. He will not be returning, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Louisville has said, and the school held a meeting for parents over the weekend with the FBI on hand.
Dietz had support in last month’s House Judiciary Committee meeting from Jeremy Murrell, deputy commissioner of the Department of Criminal Investigations for Counter Exploitation in the Kentucky Attorney General's Office. Murrell said the bill “gives prosecutors and law enforcement officers new tools to deal with a new trend in child sex abuse material.”
Some of the images Fautz is alleged to have produced edited students’ yearbook photos into other pornographic images involving children, according to his federal charging document. Lt. Bowling, testifying in late January to the committee, said using AI to make those alterations can make a victim of one individual while also revictimizing a previous victim by bringing older images back into circulation.
Before Monday's vote, the bill passed through the House Judiciary Committee's Jan. 24 meeting with unanimous approval. Rep. Josh Bray, R-Mount Vernon, was among its supporters, calling the legislation "so needed and so appreciated" as the use of AI grows. The General Assembly is also considering a resolution establishing an "Artificial Intelligence Task Force" for further studies.
"Unfortunately we’ve seen some real sickness, and it’s not going to get better," Bray said. … We’re headed to some uncharted territory, and there’s some real scary possibilities on the horizon."
Reach Lucas Aulbach at laulbach@courier-journal.com. Reach Rebecca Grapevine at rgrapevine@courier-journal.com.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Kentucky legislature considers bill against AI porn, child sex dolls
