Law / United States / 
Ohio
S.B. 163, AI-Generated Content Watermark and Provenance Mandate
Before the second chamber, dated , as of .
An AI transparency rule binding private bodies.
- Audit expectation
- none
- Setting the rule reaches
- General
Where it has got to
The text described here is As Passed by the Senate. That print is 02_PS, published .
Locally, this stage is House Technology and Innovation Committee.
The stage above is recorded at www.legislature.ohio.gov.
Senate passed SB 163 30-0 on . Introduced in the House and referred to the House Technology and Innovation Committee ; no committee or floor action recorded since. The 136th General Assembly runs through .
What it requires
- What follows describes the bill as passed by the Ohio Senate.
- If you create, code, or otherwise produce a generative AI system publicly accessible to Ohio consumers for personal use, program it to place a distinctive watermark on any image or video it generates, informing the user the content is AI-generated, and to embed provenance data in content it creates.
- Do not knowingly and with intent to deceive a third party remove a required watermark, or knowingly distribute content fully generated by a generative AI system with false information about its authenticity.
- A business-to-business use of a generative AI system for an otherwise lawful purpose would fall outside this measure.
These lines are LexLint's reading of the law's text.
In the frameworks
- NIST AI RMF
- MEASURE 2.8Risks associated with transparency and accountability – as identified in the MAP function – are examined and documented.
- NIST AI 600-1
- GAI-RISK-07Human-AI Configuration
- GAI-RISK-08Information Integrity
- OWASP Agentic Top 10
- ASI09Human-Agent Trust Exploitation
- MIT mitigations Draft
- FINOS AIGF
- AIR-DET-021Agent Decision Audit and Explainability
- 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 exposureNo
Private right of actionYes
Penalty structure
As passed by the Senate, the Attorney General could seek a civil penalty of up to $10,000 specifically for a violation of the watermark-removal ban; the false-authenticity-distribution ban carries injunctive relief and the conditional private civil action described in the summary, but no separately stated civil penalty.
- Rule
- Fixed only
- As of
- Currency
- USD
- Fixed cap
- 10,000
Who enforces it
Enforcement body
The Attorney General, by a civil action for injunctive relief against a violation of divisions (B) to (D) of section 1349.13.
Settledness
- As of
- Open questions
- Does a generative artificial intelligence system offered through an API or business account but used by individuals for personal purposes count as "publicly accessible by consumers within the state for personal use" under section 1349.13(A)(1)(a)?
- Does the business-to-business exclusion in section 1349.13(A)(1)(b) remove a provider that offers one system both to businesses and directly to consumers?
- Does division (B)(1), which says generative artificial intelligence systems "shall be programmed" to carry a watermark without naming who must program them, bind only a covered provider?
- What makes information about authenticity "false" under division (D) of section 1349.13?
What it reaches
How the hook was established
express
What makes it apply
Market targeting, Place of effect
Obligation class
Content labelling, Disclosure
Applicability criteria
The definition of covered provider excludes business-to-business use of generative artificial intelligence systems for a purpose not otherwise prohibited by law.
- As of
- Combinator
- All of
- Criteria
- creates, codes, or otherwise produces a generative artificial intelligence system
- publicly accessible by consumers within the state for personal use
What it makes you log
Logging duty
Proposed section 1349.13 would require a generative AI system to be programmed to put a distinctive watermark on the images and videos it generates and a covered provider to include provenance data in the content its system creates, and bars removing the watermark to deceive. The provenance data travels with the content itself rather than being kept as a separate log, and the bill states no duty to create, keep or produce on demand a record of it. Section 1349.14 gives the attorney general investigative subpoena power over an alleged violation, which is an enforcement tool and not an expectation that any kept record be checked.
- Kind
- None
- As of
What this law does
Senate Bill 163 passed the Ohio Senate on and was referred to the House Technology and Innovation Committee on ; what follows describes it as the Senate passed it.
A "covered provider," a person or entity that creates, codes, or otherwise produces a generative AI system publicly accessible to Ohio consumers for personal use, would have to program the system to place a distinctive watermark on any image or video it generates that informs the user the content was AI-generated, and to embed provenance data in content the system creates; business-to-business use of a generative AI system for an otherwise lawful purpose is excluded.
It would be a violation, done knowingly and with intent to deceive a third party, to remove a required watermark or to distribute content fully generated by a generative AI system with false information about its authenticity. A person aggrieved by such a violation could bring a civil action for damages, but only after first filing a complaint with the Attorney General and the Attorney General not filing its own action within six months.
The Attorney General could separately seek injunctive relief for a violation of the watermark or false-authenticity bans, and a civil penalty of up to $10,000 specifically for a violation of the watermark-removal ban.
When LexLint raises it
When your app profile says your app generates content with AI, generates images with AI or generates video with AI.
Back to the example · Lint your app
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