South Dakota

SDCL § 22-24A-2(5) defines computer-generated child pornography to include a visual depiction of an actual minor altered to show a prohibited sexual act, an actual adult altered to appear as a minor engaged in a prohibited sexual act, or an individual indistinguishable from an actual minor created by the use of artificial intelligence or other computer technology capable of processing and interpreting specific data inputs to create a visual depiction.

Sections 22-24A-35 to 22-24A-37 were enacted by SB 79, signed by the Governor on February 12, 2024. Possessing computer-generated child pornography is a Class 4 felony with a mandatory minimum sentence of one year, on the same terms as possessing a depiction of an actual minor. Distributing it is a Class 3 felony with a mandatory minimum of five years.

Manufacturing it is a Class 2 felony with a mandatory minimum of ten years, and there is no exemption for synthetic or AI-generated output in any of the three offenses. SDCL § 22-24A-7's civil-damages provision, unamended since 2014, arms a plaintiff for conduct proscribed by "§§ 22-24A-1 to 22-24A-20", a range that does not by its own terms reach §§ 22-24A-35 to -37; no source located addresses whether a court would read the civil-damages chapter to reach the successor sections.

SB 41 was introduced at the request of the Attorney General and signed by the Governor on March 16, 2026.

SDCL § 22-21-4(3) makes it a Class 5 felony for an individual, without the consent or knowledge of the person depicted and with intent to self-gratify, alarm, annoy, embarrass, harass, invade privacy, threaten, or cause emotional, financial, physical, psychological, or reputational harm, to knowingly and intentionally create, disclose, disseminate, distribute, or sell digitally fabricated material depicting an identifiable individual in a state of nudity or engaged in sexual conduct.

Section 22-21-4.1 defines digitally fabricated material as an image, photograph, video, or other visual depiction that appears to an ordinary person to be an authentic depiction of an identifiable individual and is adapted, generated, or modified to falsely depict that individual's appearance, conduct, or voice; "identifiable" means recognizable by face, likeness, or another distinguishing characteristic.

Section 22-21-5 shields an electronic communication, information, mobile, telecommunication, interactive computer, or cable service provider, as those terms are defined under federal law, from liability under this section.

SB 164 was signed by the Governor on March 25, 2025.

This law prohibits any person, with intent to injure a candidate, from disseminating a deepfake (an image, audio recording, or video recording created or manipulated with artificial intelligence or other digital technology that a reasonable person would believe depicts the real speech or conduct of someone who did not engage in it) within 90 days of an election, unless the item carries the disclosure described in SDCL § 12-26-37; a violation is a Class 1 misdemeanor.

The required disclosure must be sized and placed as the statute specifies for each media type. The prohibition exempts satire or parody, a bona fide news broadcast that acknowledges questions about the item's authenticity, a paid periodical or website of general circulation carrying news and commentary, and an internet, hosting, or connectivity provider acting in a merely technical or automatic capacity.

The Attorney General, an injured or likely-to-be-injured candidate, or the individual depicted may seek injunctive or other equitable relief prohibiting the dissemination. A violator is also civilly liable to the candidate and the depicted individual for damages, costs, and attorney fees, proven by clear and convincing evidence.

Following discovery of a breach of system security, an information holder must disclose the breach to any affected South Dakota resident not later than 60 days from discovery, absent a law-enforcement delay. An information holder whose breach exceeds 250 South Dakota residents (not 250,000, correcting an initial WebSearch summary against the enrolled bill's own text) must also disclose the breach to the Attorney General by mail or electronic mail.

Personal information excludes information lawfully made available to the general public from government records; it folds in biometric data only in a narrow, conditional way, as one component of an employer-assigned identification number used for authentication, not as a freestanding sensitive category. The Attorney General may prosecute a failure to disclose as a deceptive act under SDCL sec. 37-24-6 and may separately bring an action for a civil penalty of up to $10,000 per day per violation.

South Dakota's general Deceptive Trade Practices and Consumer Protection chapter independently arms any person adversely affected by a sec. 37-24-6 violation with a private civil action for actual damages (SDCL sec. 37-24-31), and unlike the comparable enforcement clauses in Pennsylvania, South Carolina's Chapter 80, or West Virginia, this breach statute's enforcement section contains no exclusivity language naming the Attorney General as the sole enforcer.

Whether this deeming-plus-private-action chain actually arms a resident to sue over a notice violation is left here as an open, statute-supported question rather than a settled finding, since no case construing sec. 22-40-25 together with sec. 37-24-31 was found.

SDCL § 43-43B-1 makes it unlawful for a person to knowingly access, or exceed authorized access to, copy or obtain information from, disrupt or deny access to, or modify or destroy a computer system, software, or data, in each case without the consent of the owner; ordinary automated access to a page the operator has made generally available is not itself addressed by any reported South Dakota decision.

Section 43-43B-3 grades the nine listed acts from a Class 1 misdemeanor up to a Class 2 felony depending on which act was committed and, for the top tier, whether it was done as part of a deceptive scheme to obtain money, property, or services; § 43-43B-7 states that the chapter neither creates nor forecloses a private civil claim over the same conduct.

Requires a covered platform, defined as a website whose regular course of trade or business is to create, host, or make available material harmful to minors, to implement reasonable age verification (state issued driver license or non-driver ID, bank account information, an age restricted debit or credit card, or another reliable method) and to prevent minors from accessing that material. Verifiers may not sell or retain identifying information. Search engines, internet service providers, and cloud providers are exempt.