HB581

HB581 extends Texas’s civil regulatory framework for sexual material harmful to minors to certain publicly available creation tools and applications. A covered commercial operator must verify users are at least 18 using the statutory identification or commercial age-verification methods. The covered artificial material involves a recognizable actual person and must meet the chapter’s legal definition of material harmful to minors; this is not a ban on all AI images or all depictions of adults. Signed June 20, 2025, the bill took effect September 1, 2025. Final law; history.

Covered operators must also ensure that a person used as a source for the artificial material is 18 or older and consented to the use of that person’s face and body. An important exception applies to both this source-person requirement and the new tool-access age check: an operator must prohibit generation of the covered artificial material in terms or policies acknowledged before access, and take affirmative technological steps to limit its creation. The act gives examples such as effective reporting, detection and filtering; a policy statement alone does not meet both conditions.

Businesses and third parties performing the required age checks may not retain users’ identifying information. The act extends the existing protection for internet-access, search and cloud providers that merely connect users to content outside their control and are not responsible for creating it. The chapter also retains its bona fide news/public-interest exception. Definitions, exceptions and enforcement framework.

The attorney general can seek an injunction, civil penalties and other appropriate relief for knowing violations under the existing enforcement procedure. Listed maximum penalties remain tied to particular conditions: up to $10,000 per day for violating age-verification requirements, $10,000 per instance of prohibited identifying-information retention, and an additional amount up to $250,000 when a minor gains access because of an age-verification violation. The bill adds the source-person provision to the enforcement section’s cross-reference, but does not separately assign a flat dollar penalty to every lack-of-consent incident. It does not create a new criminal offense through this act.