In a crowded Florida Senate Criminal Justice Committee hearing, Pensacola High School senior Lucy Adams Stevenson stepped forward to share her painful experience as a victim of AI-generated exploitation. The student leader introduced herself: “I’m Lucy Adams Stevenson. I’m a senior in the IB program at Pensacola High School. I’m also our Student Body Vice President.”
Lucy testified in support of Senator Don Gaetz’s SB 1180, designed to close a loophole in current law that allowed her perpetrator to escape consequences.
Technology Misused
Lucy detailed her experience: “In early September, a video was sent around just of a bunch of my friends nude, and they were edited into child pornography using an AI app.” She explained that the perpetrator was “my God brother, very close family friend.”
Lucy shared the personal impact: “In my image, I was 16 years old working at the Christian summer camp, and I was with a fellow counselor, and again, it was taken from our private Instagram accounts and edited into child pornography.”
When victims reported the incident to law enforcement, they hit a legal roadblock. Lucy explained: “The law did not do anything to him because he did not send the pictures out. He had just stored them on his phone, and his ex-girlfriend was the one who sent them to everyone… So she got in a bunch of trouble, but nothing really happened to him, which is why I’m in support of the bill to prevent it in the future and to hold people like him accountable.”
Closing the Loophole
Senator Gaetz told the committee that the origins of SB 1180 were the case that Stevenson had highlighted. “An 18-year-old male collected and stored images of teenage girls off the internet. Then he used artificial intelligence to address them and create images that looked authentic but were hardcore pornography.”
The bill seeks to address this gap in the law by making it a third-degree felony to “willfully and maliciously generate and possess hardcore pornography of an identifiable person without that person’s consent.” As Gaetz emphasized, “There have to be guardrails, Mr. Chairman, around misusing artificial intelligence to create deep fakes that sexually exploit and victimize young women. That’s this bill.”
The senator acknowledged that “many of the girls depicted in the photos are traumatized by the incident, and they and their parents are worried about will happen to those images.” In his closing remarks, he also thanked “Governor DeSantis for the interest that he took personally in this matter and bringing it to the attention of many of us.”
Moving Forward: Unanimous Support
The committee’s response to Lucy’s testimony was powerful and immediate. The bill received unanimous support, with senators voting to advance the legislation to protect other potential victims from similar exploitation.
The House companion bill, HB 757, continues to move through the legislative process as well, suggesting strong bipartisan momentum to address this critical issue.
