Committee hears emotional testimony on bill to ban face-swap "nudify" features and create penalties
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Summary
House File 1606 would prohibit face-swap or "nudify" features that produce nonconsensual explicit images and establish civil penalties; multiple survivors testified about personal harms and authors urged referral to judiciary. The committee adopted an author's amendment and laid the bill over.
Representative Hansen told the committee HF 1606 would define "nudifying" or face-swap features, require platforms to disable such features for Minnesota users, prohibit promotion/advertising of those features and create civil penalties to fund victim services. Hansen framed the bill in terms of escalating harms from AI-generated nonconsensual sexual images and cited International Web Foundation reporting on rapid advances in image-generation technology.
Multiple survivors provided emotional testimony describing how someone they knew used a private photo to generate pornographic images and videos, the lasting psychological and economic harm they experienced and the difficulty of removing images from the internet. Molly Kelly, Jessica Gustely and Megan Hurley told the committee their images were used to create realistic sexual content without consent; they said current law and the voluntary "Take It Down" processes fall short. Testimony argued the feature is a distinct technological function that can be regulated without banning legitimate artistic uses of image tools.
Members adopted the DE1 author's amendment, discussed referring the bill to the judiciary committee for legal vetting, and laid HF 1606 over for further work. Several members and the chair noted the need to coordinate with other bodies and to draft precise definitions to avoid unintended First Amendment conflicts while targeting nonconsensual commercialized misuse.
