California Protecting Our Children from Online Extortion Act (SB 1015)

Properties

kind: law
target: likeness
jurisdiction: US, California
mechanism: Amends California's contact-with-a-minor and extortion statutes to explicitly include threats, intimidation, or coercion made using an AI-generated deepfake image as a means of committing the offense. The bill's text at Section 518(c)(2)(A) covers threats made with an image 'including an image of an intimate body part that is produced by artificial intelligence and depicts the identity of another minor.' It also creates a related offense for a minor who coerces or uses another minor to harm, groom, harass, or exploit a third minor. Where the perpetrator is a minor ineligible for diversion services under Welfare and Institutions Code Section 654, the offense is a misdemeanor.
status: committee
owns: Distinct from ca-deepfake-pornography-act (a civil cause of action under Civil Code 1708.86 for disclosure or creation of AI-altered sexual depictions generally) by operating through the criminal extortion and minor-contact statutes specifically for deepfake images used as leverage against minors, rather than creating a standalone civil claim available to victims of any age.
source: California Legislative Information, SB-1015 bill text
notes: Held in Assembly Appropriations Committee suspense file August 13, 2026, and never released. The Legislature's floor deadline for the 2025-2026 regular session (a two-year session) passed on August 31, 2026, so this bill did not receive a floor vote in either house and did not become law. The baseline's prior note ('has not advanced to an Assembly floor vote as of this writing') is superseded: the window in which it could advance has now closed. Status is left as 'committee' because this topic's ProvisionStatus enum (in-effect / enacted-pending / committee / proposed / active / deprecated) has no value for a bill that failed to advance within its session; the orchestrator may want to add a 'failed' or 'dead' status value to the schema, mirroring the same gap already flagged on ca-sb1111-digital-replica-impersonation's enrolled-but-unsigned status.

Provenance

Source: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260SB1015

Properties

kind

law

target

likeness

jurisdiction

US, California

mechanism

Amends California's contact-with-a-minor and extortion statutes to explicitly include threats, intimidation, or coercion made using an AI-generated deepfake image as a means of committing the offense. The bill's text at Section 518(c)(2)(A) covers threats made with an image 'including an image of an intimate body part that is produced by artificial intelligence and depicts the identity of another minor.' It also creates a related offense for a minor who coerces or uses another minor to harm, groom, harass, or exploit a third minor. Where the perpetrator is a minor ineligible for diversion services under Welfare and Institutions Code Section 654, the offense is a misdemeanor.

status

committee

owns

Distinct from ca-deepfake-pornography-act (a civil cause of action under Civil Code 1708.86 for disclosure or creation of AI-altered sexual depictions generally) by operating through the criminal extortion and minor-contact statutes specifically for deepfake images used as leverage against minors, rather than creating a standalone civil claim available to victims of any age.

source

California Legislative Information, SB-1015 bill text

notes

Held in Assembly Appropriations Committee suspense file August 13, 2026, and never released. The Legislature's floor deadline for the 2025-2026 regular session (a two-year session) passed on August 31, 2026, so this bill did not receive a floor vote in either house and did not become law. The baseline's prior note ('has not advanced to an Assembly floor vote as of this writing') is superseded: the window in which it could advance has now closed. Status is left as 'committee' because this topic's ProvisionStatus enum (in-effect / enacted-pending / committee / proposed / active / deprecated) has no value for a bill that failed to advance within its session; the orchestrator may want to add a 'failed' or 'dead' status value to the schema, mirroring the same gap already flagged on ca-sb1111-digital-replica-impersonation's enrolled-but-unsigned status.