With the new year comes an array of new laws slated to take effect across the country throughout 2025 on issues like artificial intelligence, legacy college admissions and surgical care for transgender youth.More than half a dozen states will have new data privacy and consumer protections, while federal regulations will require air travelers to present compliant licenses or identification cards to fly domestically.After a busy election cycle, state legislatures are ready to tackle yet another year of hot-button political issues, soon under a Trump administration. Here are some of the laws that will ring in 2025:Guardrails against AI Two states will begin to regulate uses of AI with the aim of mitigating the potential harms of the rapidly growing technology.In Illinois, it will become illegal to knowingly distribute audio- or visual-based digital replicas of individuals created through generative AI without their consent. The act also applies a 50-year prohibition on the use of a digital replica of an individual after their death if they did not previously consent to such use.There are still certain instances to which the act does not apply, such as parody, or when there is a political, public interest, educational or newsworthy value to the digital replica — as long as it is not falsely presented as authentic.The Recording Academy was a vocal proponent of the law since its introduction in February, championing its passage as a victory in protecting artists and creators against AI. Illinois state Rep. Jennifer Gong-Gershowitz, who introduced the bill, said the motivation for the legislation came from cases of the unauthorized use of artists’ identities in AI-generated music.“I have seen increasing concern from lawmakers, really spurred by concern by our constituents, about the dangers posed by AI, the availability of AI as a tool, both in positive ways, but also in ways that can infringe on somebody’s right to privacy, or in fact, to really steal their identity,” Gong-Gershowitz said.Another law in Illinois addresses AI-generated child pornography, prohibiting the use of the technology to create obscene material of a real or purported child. The law also separately forbids the nonconsensual dissemination of sexually explicit digitized depictions, which is a Class 4 felony.“What we wanted to do was to ensure that law enforcement could prosecute cases of child pornography without the necessity of proving that the image is of an actual child,” Gong-Gershowitz said. “The goal here is to ensure that we don’t normalize violence against children.”Meanwhile, California is tackling the use of AI in Hollywood. One law will require informed consent by performers in the entertainment industry to replicate their voice or likeness with AI, while a second law will extend the protection to digital replicas produced within 70 years of a personality’s death, with a few exceptions.States are taking the lead in filling gaps from the lack of fed
Ven. Gen 10th, 2025
