Law / United States / Mississippi
HB 1308 (2025), Morphed-Image Child Exploitation Amendments
Miss. Code Ann. §§ 97-5-31, 97-5-33, 97-5-35, 97-5-37 (as amended by HB 1308, 2025 Regular Session)
A citation is an address, not a summary. The first part names the law; what follows narrows it to the exact section, article or paragraph.
In force since 1 July 2025.
An AI prohibited practices rule binding public and private bodies.
As of 6 September 2026.
What it requires
- Do not use any means, including a computer, to cause, depict, record, transport, sell, or knowingly possess a visual depiction of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct; this reaches a computer-generated or morphed image, and since 2025 no longer requires the depicted minor to be an identifiable real child.
- Whether this statute reaches a depiction generated entirely by artificial intelligence with no real child's likeness at all is not resolved by its text; the offenses for transporting, selling, and possessing such a depiction are worded in terms of an actual child.
If you get it wrong
Criminal exposureYes
Criminal exposure note
A first conviction under Section 97-5-33 is a felony punishable by a fine of $50,000 to $500,000 and imprisonment of 5 to 40 years; a second or subsequent conviction is punishable by a fine of $100,000 to $1,000,000 and imprisonment of 20 years to life.
Penalty structure
First-offense range under Section 97-5-35: a fine of $50,000 to $500,000. A second or subsequent conviction escalates to a fine of $100,000 to $1,000,000, which this field does not carry separately.
- Rule
- Fixed only
- As of
- 6 September 2026
- Minimum
- 50,000
- Currency
- USD
- Fixed cap
- 500,000
Who enforces it
Settledness
- As of
- 6 September 2026
- Open questions
- Does the phrase 'an actual child' in Section 97-5-33(3) through (5) reach a visual depiction generated entirely by artificial intelligence with no identifiable or real child's likeness involved, given that Section 97-5-31(f)'s 2025-amended morphed image definition no longer requires the depicted minor to be identifiable?
What it reaches
Obligation class
Prohibition
What this law does
Drafted with AI from the cited sources under the direction of UnGovr staff. UnGovr holds editorial responsibility for this page.
Mississippi's child-exploitation statute already defined a morphed image to include a computer or computer-generated image or picture of sexually explicit conduct created, adapted, or modified to appear to depict a minor engaging in the conduct.
House Bill 1308 (2025), enacted primarily to create a new child-grooming offense, also amended Section 97-5-31 to remove the definition of identifiable child and to remove identifiable child in the definition of child and morphed images, so prosecuting a morphed-image offense no longer requires proof of the specific real-world identity of the depicted minor.
The underlying offenses that reach transporting, selling, and knowingly possessing such a depiction (Section 97-5-33(3) to (5)) are still worded in terms of an actual child, so whether a depiction generated entirely by artificial intelligence, with no real child's likeness involved at all, falls within them is not settled by the statute's text.
A first conviction under Section 97-5-33 is a felony punishable by a fine of $50,000 to $500,000 and imprisonment of 5 to 40 years; a second or subsequent conviction is punishable by a fine of $100,000 to $1,000,000 and imprisonment of 20 years to life. Signed by the Governor April 17, 2025, effective July 1, 2025.
When LexLint raises it
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Read the law
official enrolled bill text as sent to the Governor, Mississippi Legislature
the codified Mississippi Code is licensed to a single commercial publisher and has no free official url