RomaniaCod penal, Art. 374, Pornografia infantilă (Child Pornography, Including Simulated or Computer-Generated Depictions of Minors)
Codul penal (Legea nr. 286/2009) art. 374, as amended by Ordonanța de urgență nr. 18/2016, publicată în Monitorul Oficial nr. 389 din 23 mai 2016, and by Legea nr. 202/2024, publicată în Monitorul Oficial nr. 607 din 28 iunie 2024
archived copy
Read from a public archive copy, not the publisher directly. The publisher does not serve this page to automated readers, so a direct fetch was not an option here; how we access sources. Archived 2026. Publisher's page: https://legislatie.just.ro/Public/DetaliiDocument/109855In force since .
An AI prohibited practices rule binding public and private bodies.
- Obligation class
- Prohibition
- Audit expectation
- none
- Setting the rule reaches
- General
What it requires
- Do not produce, possess, procure, store, exhibit, promote, distribute, or make available material that credibly simulates a minor in sexually explicit conduct, including a synthetic or computer-generated image with no real person behind it, per Cod penal art. 374(1) and (4).
- Do not access such material without right through a computer system or another electronic communications means, per Cod penal art. 374(3).
- Do not, as an adult, ask a minor to record, produce, distribute, display or transmit sexually explicit material, including material that credibly simulates a minor, per Cod penal art. 374(3^2).
These lines are LexLint's reading of the law's text.
In the frameworks
- NIST AI RMF
- MAP 3.3Targeted application scope is specified and documented based on the system’s capability, established context, and AI system categorization.
- NIST AI 600-1
- GAI-RISK-08Information Integrity
- GAI-RISK-11Obscene, Degrading, and/or Abusive Content
- MIT mitigations Draft
- FINOS AIGF
- AIR-PREV-005System Acceptance Testing
- ETSI EN 304 223
Our reading of where this law's duties sit in each framework. It never says that running a control meets the law. How we read a framework against the law
Identifiers refer to ETSI EN 304 223 V2.1.1 (2025-12), © ETSI 2025, all rights reserved. ETSI owns the standard; no ETSI text (titles or sentences) is reproduced here. The standard is free to download from ETSI.
If you get it wrong
Criminal exposureYes
Criminal exposure note
Producing, possessing, procuring, storing, exhibiting, promoting, distributing, or making available prohibited material, including a synthetic or computer-generated image that credibly simulates a minor in sexually explicit conduct, carries 3 to 10 years' imprisonment (art. 374(1)), rising to 5 to 12 years where committed through a computer system or another means of storing computer data (art. 374(2)). Accessing such material through a computer system or electronic communications carries 1 to 3 years' imprisonment (art. 374(3)). Inducing or recruiting a minor for a pornographic performance, profiting from one, or otherwise exploiting a minor for one carries the same 3 to 10 years (art. 374(1^1)); watching such a performance carries 1 to 5 years' imprisonment (art. 374(1^2)). An adult who asks a minor to record, produce, distribute, display or transmit such material, including material that credibly simulates a minor, faces 5 to 12 years' imprisonment (art. 374(3^2)). Where the offender is a family member or a person living with the victim, a person responsible for the minor's care or education, or a person who abused a position of trust or authority over the minor, where the act endangered the minor's life, or where the offender has a prior conviction for a sexual offence against a minor, the special limits rise by one third (art. 374(3^1)). Attempt is punishable (art. 374(5)).
Who enforces it
Settledness
- As of
- Open questions
- Does 'simulează, în mod credibil, un minor' in Article 374(4) reach an image generated wholly by a model that shows a figure with no real person behind it, and by what test is credibility measured?
- Which age test applies to a synthetic figure under 'un minor' in Article 374(4): does the figure have to appear to be under eighteen to an ordinary viewer, or is some other age threshold used?
What it makes you log
Logging duty
Article 374 defines prohibited child-pornography material to include an image that does not depict a real person but credibly simulates a minor in sexually explicit conduct, and punishes producing, possessing, storing, exhibiting, promoting, distributing or accessing such material. It states no duty to create, keep or produce a log or record of anything.
- Kind
- None
- As of
What this law does
Cod penal art. 374 defines prohibited child-pornography material to include an image that does not depict a real person but credibly simulates a minor in sexually explicit conduct, bringing AI-generated, deepfake or otherwise synthetic material within the same ban that reaches real-person depictions. The same definition reaches any representation of a child's genitals for a sexual purpose.
Producing, possessing, storing, exhibiting, promoting, distributing, or making such material available carries 3 to 10 years' imprisonment. That penalty rises to 5 to 12 years where the offence is committed through a computer system or another means of storing computer data. Accessing such material through a computer system or electronic communications carries 1 to 3 years' imprisonment.
An adult who asks a minor to record, produce, distribute, display or transmit such material, including material that credibly simulates a minor, faces 5 to 12 years' imprisonment. Law 202/2024, published in the Monitorul Oficial of , set these penalties from . Paragraph 4 already defined prohibited material, before the 2016 amendments, to include an image that does not depict a real person but credibly simulates a minor.
When LexLint raises it
When your app profile says your app generates images with AI, generates video with AI, publishes adult content or trains models.
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