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
Is the AI jobs apocalypse upon us? On Ian Explains, Ian Bremmer breaks down the confusing indicators in today’s labor market and how both efficiency gains as well as displacement from AI will affect the global workforce.
Most Popular
Think you know what's going on around the world? Here's your chance to prove it.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage holds a post-budget conference in London, United Kingdom, on Nov. 26, 2025.
Phil Lewis/WENN
Nigel Farage, the far-right UK leader, reportedly told donors that he plans to join forces with the center-right Conservative Party ahead of the next election. Right-wing groups in other parts of Western Europe have largely avoided making such an alliance.
Nearly four years into Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the push to end the war is intensifying. The past few weeks produced not one but two proposals.
© 2025 GZERO Media. All Rights Reserved | A Eurasia Group media company.