Law / United States / 
West Virginia
SB 198 (2025), computer-generated child pornography prohibition
W. Va. Code §§ 61-8C-1, 61-8C-3
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 send, distribute, exhibit, possess, electronically access with intent to view, display, or transport a visual portrayal of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct, or an AI-created or AI-altered portrayal that is indistinguishable from a minor or that depicts an identifiable minor engaged in such conduct.
- This applies whether or not the depicted minor's actual identity can be ascertained, and whether the material is a real image or a synthetic one produced or altered by artificial intelligence.
- Penalties rise with the number of images involved: two to five years for 50 or fewer images, three to fifteen years for 51 to 299 images, and five to twenty years, or a higher tier for 300 or more images or material depicting violence against a child.
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
A felony with three sentencing tiers by image count: not less than two nor more than five years (or a fine of not more than $5,000, or both) for 50 or fewer images; not less than three nor more than fifteen years (or a fine of not more than $10,000, or both) for more than 50 but fewer than 300 images; and not less than five nor more than twenty years (or a fine of not more than $25,000, or both) for 300 or more images, or for material depicting violence against a child or a child engaging in bestiality regardless of count.
What it makes you log
Logging duty
Sections 61-8C-1 and 61-8C-3 define and criminalize computer-generated child pornography alongside traditional child pornography. They impose no duty to create, keep, or produce a log or record of any kind.
- Kind
- None
- As of
What this law does
Senate Bill 198 (2025) amended West Virginia's Filming of Sexually Explicit Conduct of Minors article to define computer-generated child pornography as a visual portrayal of an identifiable minor that has been created, adapted, or modified to depict the minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct, or a visual portrayal that appears to depict a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct where the portrayal was created by artificial intelligence or other computer technology and is indistinguishable from a minor.
Any person who knowingly sends, distributes, exhibits, possesses, electronically accesses with intent to view, displays, or transports such material, alongside traditional child pornography, is guilty of a felony, with three graduated sentencing tiers keyed to the number of images involved. The prohibition binds any person and does not depend on whether the depicted minor's actual identity can be ascertained.
When LexLint raises it
When your app profile says your app generates images with AI, generates video with AI or publishes adult content.
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