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Senate Judiciary considers bill to criminalize online grooming, address AI-enabled child exploitation
Summary
House Bill 82, carried for the Department of Justice, would create specific offenses for online grooming, allow undercover officers to stand in for child victims in certain cases, and address AI-generated sexual material.
The Montana Senate Judiciary Committee heard House Bill 82, a Department of Justice-requested bill lawmakers say is designed to modernize state law for online grooming, sextortion and emerging risks from artificial intelligence.
Representative Kathy Love, sponsor of HB 82, said the measure "creates specific offenses for online grooming, it addresses the AI generated exploitation materials, it enables proactive law enforcement intervention so they can act sooner and it establishes clear penalties for digital exploitation." She described the bill as a response to a growing national and state-level rise in online reports involving children.
Department of Justice and law-enforcement testimony
Alex Sturhan, director of external affairs for the Montana Department of Justice, and Celine Koepke, an assistant attorney general in the DOJ’s Appellate Services Bureau, outlined why the department requested the bill. Koepke said the text inserts language to permit a law enforcement officer acting undercover to stand in the place of a real child victim for certain online…
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