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Law / United States / Texas

S.B. 20 (2025), possession, promotion, or production of AI-generated or apparent child pornography

Tex. Penal Code § 43.235

In 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 knowingly possess, access with intent to view, or promote obscene visual material that appears to depict a child younger than 18 engaging in sexual conduct, whether the depiction is of an actual child, a cartoon or animation, or an AI-generated image.
  • Do not use an image of an actual child to train an AI model to produce material that constitutes child pornography.
  • Either offense is a state jail felony at minimum, rising to a third-degree felony on one prior conviction under this section or the related child-pornography sections, and a second-degree felony on two or more.

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
MIT mitigations Draft
  • 1.5Safety Decision Frameworks
  • 3.3Access Management
FINOS AIGF
ETSI EN 304 223
  • 5.1.2-1Business need and security risks written down and assessed before deciding to build an AI system.
  • 5.1.4-5End-users told which uses of the system are prohibited.

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

A state jail felony, elevated to a third-degree felony on one prior conviction under this section or Section 43.23, 43.26, 43.261, or 43.262, and a second-degree felony on two or more such prior convictions.

What it makes you log

Logging duty

Section 43.235 creates a criminal offense for possessing, accessing, promoting, or using a child's image to train an artificial intelligence model to produce child pornography. It states no duty to create, keep, or produce a log or record.

Kind
None
As of

What this law does

Drafted with AI

Drafted with AI from the cited sources under the direction of UnGovr staff. UnGovr holds editorial responsibility for this page. How this site is made

Research summary

Legal information, not legal advice. This is LexLint's own research summary of a public legal source, and it creates no attorney-client relationship. For decisions that matter, consult qualified counsel in the relevant jurisdiction. About LexLint

A person commits an offense by knowingly possessing, accessing with intent to view, or promoting obscene visual material that appears to depict a child younger than 18 engaging in sexual conduct, regardless of whether the depiction is of an actual child, a cartoon or animation, or an image created with an AI application or other computer software. A separate offense covers using an image of an actual child to train an AI model to produce material constituting child pornography.

The offense is a state jail felony, rising to a third-degree felony on one prior conviction under this section or the related child-pornography sections, and a second-degree felony on two or more.

When LexLint raises it

When your app profile says your app generates images with AI, generates video with AI, trains models or publishes adult content.

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