May 28, 2024
This month, the US Department of Justice charged a 42-year-old Wisconsin man named Steven Anderegg with alleged crimes related to creating and distributing AI-generated child pornography. If convicted of all four counts brought by federal prosecutors, Anderegg faces up to 70 years in prison.
The case is novel. It’s the first time that the federal government has brought charges for child porn fully generated by AI. The government said that Anderegg created a trove of 13,000 fake images using the text-to-image generator Stable Diffusion, made by the company Stability AI, along with certain add-ons to the technology. This isn’t the first blow-up involving Stable Diffusion, though. In December, Stanford University researchers found that the dataset LAION-5B, used by Stable Diffusion, included 1,679 illegal images of child sexual abuse material.
This case could set a new precedent for an open question: Is AI-generated child pornography — for all intents and purposes under the law — child pornography?
More For You
- YouTube
Can a war-torn Lebanon disarm Hezbollah, end Israel’s occupation of its southern territory, and reclaim control of its future? Beirut-based journalist Kim Ghattas joins Ian Bremmer on GZERO World.
Most Popular
Think you know what's going on around the world? Here's your chance to prove it.
Explosions take place on the deck of the Greek-flagged oil tanker Sounion on the Red Sea, in this handout picture released August 29, 2024.
Houthi Military Media/Handout via REUTERS
The Houthis attacked two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea today as part of a blockade on shipping to and from Saudi Arabia through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait
The World Health Organization said this week that 80% of the confirmed cases are coming from unknown chains of transmission
© 2025 GZERO Media. All Rights Reserved | A Eurasia Group media company.