On March 26, 2026, Minnesota's House Commerce Finance and Policy Committee unanimously advanced HF1606, a bill sponsored by Rep. Jessica Hanson (DFL-Burnsville) that would ban accessing, downloading, or using any website, app, or software to create AI-generated nude alterations of a person's image without their consent. The bill also prohibits performing nudification on behalf of others and bans advertising or promoting nudification tools.

Why It Matters

Minnesota's bill represents a growing U.S. state-level trend of targeting nudification technology at the tool level rather than just criminalizing output. Combined with the EU's outright ban, the Dutch court's injunction against Grok, and South Dakota's new deepfake felony law, the regulatory noose around AI nudification is tightening rapidly. For AI companies developing image generation tools, the compliance landscape now requires active prevention of non-consensual intimate image generation — not just post-hoc takedowns.

HF1606 now heads to the House Judiciary Finance and Civil Law Committee. A previous version of the legislation was introduced last session but failed after being rolled into a larger omnibus bill that did not advance. The current bill includes civil lawsuit provisions — the prior version allowed injured parties to seek damages of no less than $500,000 per violation, making it one of the most aggressive anti-nudification measures proposed in any U.S. state.

Minnesota already has a 2023 law addressing deepfake distribution with penalties of up to five years in prison or civil penalties of up to $10,000 per instance. HF1606 goes further by targeting the creation tools themselves rather than just the distribution of resulting images, following the EU Parliament's recent vote to ban AI nudification apps entirely under an AI Act amendment.

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Update — 2026-03-28

Initial entry — story first created.

Update — 2026-05-03

On May 1, 2026, the Minnesota Senate passed HF1606 by a unanimous 65–0 bipartisan vote — clearing the bill's final legislative hurdle and sending it to Governor Tim Walz for signature. With Walz's expected signature, Minnesota will become the first U.S. state to explicitly ban the creation of AI-generated pornographic images without a person's consent at the tool level, not just the distribution level. The law takes effect August 1, 2026, on signature.

The Senate version of the bill confirmed the central enforcement provisions: survivors may sue nudification app owners directly for damages (mental anguish, attorney fees, plus up to triple actual damages and punitive damages), and the Minnesota Attorney General is empowered to collect civil penalties of up to $500,000 per violation (per photo or video). The bill also requires companies operating nudification technology to actively disable access for Minnesota residents — a geo-blocking obligation similar to the response Pornhub has taken to state-level age verification laws. Standard image-editing tools (Photoshop, etc.) that "require technical skill to operate" are explicitly exempted, narrowing the scope to one-click AI nudification services.

Sen. Erin Maye Quade (DFL), the Senate sponsor, framed the moment in floor remarks: "Today, we led the nation protecting women, children and everyone in public life from the harm caused by AI nudification technology." The bill is now part of a rapidly hardening U.S. state-level posture — alongside the EU's outright ban via the AI Act amendment, the Dutch court's injunction against xAI's Grok, and ongoing federal enforcement under the TAKE IT DOWN Act (whose May 19 platform compliance deadline lands 18 days after Senate passage of HF1606).

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Update — 2026-05-16

Governor Tim Walz signed HF1606 into law on May 8, 2026, making Minnesota the first U.S. state to criminalize the use of AI nudification technology itself rather than only the distribution of resulting images. The law takes effect August 1, 2026. The signing ceremony was attended by bill sponsors Rep. Jessica Hanson (House) and Sen. Erin Maye Quade (Senate), along with survivors who had testified during committee hearings about images created of them being used in harassment campaigns. Walz framed the signing as a national first, telling reporters it gives Minnesotans and the AG's office "a pathway to go after companies that are behind this kind of AI."

The signed law confirms the core enforcement framework outlined in earlier coverage: civil lawsuits by survivors against nudification-app operators with damages of $500,000+ per violation (per image or video), AG-led enforcement, and a geo-blocking obligation requiring nudification-app operators to actively disable access for Minnesota residents — a model that mirrors Pornhub/Aylo's state-level age-verification geo-blocking response. The law explicitly exempts professional image-editing software like Photoshop that "requires technical skill to operate," narrowing scope to one-click "deepnude"-style AI tools.

Walz's signature lands eleven days before the federal TAKE IT DOWN Act's May 19 platform-takedown deadline, layering Minnesota's tool-level prohibition on top of the federal nonconsensual-imagery-removal regime. Combined with the EU's AI Act nudification-app ban (March 2026), Utah's HB 276 (effective May 6), and the UK Crime and Policing Act 2026's nudification-tool provisions (Royal Assent April 29), Minnesota's signature completes one of the densest months for anti-nudification legislation since the technology emerged. Civil rights groups including EPIC and the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative have called for additional state action; New York, California, and Washington are reported to have similar bills drafted.

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Update — 2026-07-31

Elon Musk's xAI sued Minnesota days before the law takes effect. On Monday, July 27, 2026, xAI — now owned by SpaceX — filed suit in federal court in Minnesota against Attorney General Keith Ellison, seeking to block HF1606 before its August 1, 2026 effective date. It is the first major constitutional challenge to the nation's first nudification-tool ban, and it arrives with roughly 96 hours on the clock.

xAI's complaint argues the statute "imposes an overbroad, content-based ban on free speech and the tools of visual expression in a clumsy attempt to prohibit 'nudification.'" Its lawyers also attacked the penalty structure as constitutionally excessive, calculating that a business whose users generated 100,000 prohibited images would face "an eye-popping $50 billion dollars" at $500,000 per violation. The company maintains it "strictly prohibits" users from generating nonconsensual nude or sexualized imagery, and pointed to its own recent litigation against users who evaded its technical blockers to do so — a reference to the July 16, 2026 suit xAI filed against Grok user Terry Wayne Harwood.

Sen. Erin Maye Quade, the law's Senate sponsor, responded that the statute protects First Amendment rights and said: "It's sad that the creators of nudification technology would rather protect their ill-gotten profits than protect us from image-based sexual abuse." Gov. Tim Walz was blunter, posting across social media: "See you in court, creep."

Context matters for handicapping the outcome. xAI ran a similar play against a California AI-deepfake law and was partly successful — a federal judge struck down the portion restricting AI-generated deepfakes in elections. Whether that translates here is unclear: the Minnesota law targets nonconsensual sexual imagery rather than political speech, a category with far weaker First Amendment protection, and it exempts general-purpose editing tools that "require technical skill to operate." Separately, xAI is defending a proposed class action alleging Grok's image generator was used to create and share CSAM from real photos of the plaintiffs, and that the company failed to report perpetrators to authorities.

The litigation is the industry's first real test of whether tool-level prohibition survives judicial review — and the answer will govern the fate of copycat statutes in New York, California and Washington, plus the enforceability of San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu's July 17 cease-and-desist campaign against Apple and Google over nudify apps.

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Update — 2026-09-09

xAI loses again — the law stays in force for the duration of the lawsuit. On Friday, September 4, 2026, U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank denied xAI's motion for a preliminary injunction against HF1606, meaning Minnesota's nudification ban remains enforceable while the constitutional challenge proceeds. It is the company's second defeat in the case, following the July 31 denial of its temporary restraining order one day before the law took effect.

Frank's reasoning tracked the balance of harms rather than reaching the merits. "The Court finds that the balance of harms and public interest tips steeply in favor of the State," he wrote. "The State has enacted, democratically and nearly unanimously, a civil statute aimed at protecting the public from the undisputed harm stemming from AI-nudification technology and the resulting proliferation of photorealistic sexualized images. It is evident, and xAI does not dispute, that the State has an interest in curbing the generation of those images." The court again leaned on xAI's timing, noting the company sued nearly three months after the law was signed and days before it took effect: "If xAI genuinely feared irreparable harm, the Court does not doubt it would have acted more quickly to file this action and move for injunctive relief. The fact that it did not do so strongly suggests a lack of irreparable harm."

One number in the ruling is the reason this case exists. Citing a report referenced in the order, the court noted that Grok generated approximately 3 million sexualized images — including roughly 23,000 that appear to depict children — in the eleven days following the launch of a new image editing feature on X. Valley News Live also confirmed the legislative margin: the ban was enacted May 7, 2026 with 197 combined House and Senate votes in favor and one against.

Critically, this is not the end. Frank acknowledged that "the constitutional issues raised by the parties are complex, particularly when considered in the context of this new technology and the risks that it poses to the public," and future hearings will determine whether the first-of-its-kind statute survives First Amendment review on the merits. Attorney General Keith Ellison, whose office opposed the injunction on August 18, said: "I am extremely proud to be defending this law, and along with it, the dignity of the people of Minnesota. Minnesota's landmark, overwhelmingly bipartisan and nearly unanimously approved law banning AI technology products, like X.AI's Grok Imagine, from generating nudified and other sexual images continues to be in effect."

The practical effect for the sector: tool-level prohibition of nudification technology is now operative law in a US state and has survived two rounds of emergency relief. Copycat statutes drafted in New York, California and Washington gain considerable momentum from a ruling that says the state interest here "tips steeply" against a well-resourced challenger. The merits ruling, whenever it lands, remains the one that actually settles the question.

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