AI Frontier Institute

An Act to Protect Individuals from the Threatened Unauthorized Dissemination of Certain Private Images, Including Artificially Generated Private Images

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Maine Public Law Chapter 400 (LD 1944 / HP 1303), approved by the Governor on June 20, 2025, extends Maine's law on nonconsensual intimate images to cover artificially generated images, and makes threatening to share such an image a ground for a protective order. Section 2 amends the crime of unauthorized dissemination of certain private images at 17-A MRSA 511-A(1) so that it reaches any "image" rather than only a photograph, videotape, film or digital recording, and expressly covers an image "created or modified so that it appears to show" the depicted person in a state of nudity or engaged in a sexual act or sexual contact. Section 3 adds a definition of "image" at 511-A(3)(D) covering material made, captured, generated or saved as a print, computer data file, animation, videotape, livestream or other reproduced visual image. Sections 1, 4, 5 and 6 do not create a new crime of threatening. They add the act of communicating such a threat, in conscious disregard of the risk that it places the depicted person in reasonable fear, to the definition of "harassment" at 5 MRSA 4651(2) and the definition of "abuse" at 19-A MRSA 4102(1), which are the predicates for protection-from-harassment and protection-from-abuse orders.

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