(LifeSiteNews) — A federal court has affirmed a lower court’s dismissal of a charge against a man who investigators said had hundreds of AI-generated sexually explicit images of children that he had produced.
According to the Seventh Circuit Court’s decision, the pornographic images were created by Steven Andregg of Wisconsin using “Stable Diffusion, a generative artificial intelligence (‘GenAI’) software that allowed him to create hyper-realistic images of prepubescent children engaging in sexually explicit acts.”
Andregg had been accused of breaking federal obscenity law. He was charged with producing and distributing the AI-generated material, sharing it with a 15-year-old male minor, and possessing it. The possession charge was dropped on First Amendment grounds, while the other three still stand.
The Seventh Circuit judges appear to have made their ruling reluctantly, noting that existing legal precedent has not kept up with the rapid pace of technology, allowing the possession of AI-generated Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) to remain legal, for now.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas previously predicted that “technology may evolve to the point where it becomes impossible to enforce actual child pornography laws because the Government cannot prove that certain pornographic images are of real children.”
“We now live in an age where GenAI models can render images depicting the abuse of virtual children that are virtually indistinguishable from those depicting the abuse of actual children,” noted Judge John Lee, writing for the circuit court.
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“This case illuminates how this evolving technology complicates the lines drawn by the Supreme Court in Stanley, Osborne, and Free Speech Coalition. Indeed, in Free Speech Coalition, the Supreme Court addressed the scope of First Amendment protections for virtual CSAM, but that was nearly twenty-five years ago, and the image-generation technology available today was likely unimaginable back then,” noted Lee. “Given the relentless advancement in artificial intelligence models, we have some concerns about the lines these cases draw, but we are not free to redraw them ourselves.”
Judge Lee urged the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the issue of virtual child sex abuse material.
“I write separately to note that, given the significant advances in computer-generated image technology, particularly in the field of artificial intelligence, we would benefit from additional guidance from the Supreme Court regarding the intersection between the First Amendment and virtual CSAM if an appropriate case should arise,” wrote Lee.
“[T]he government argues that due to technological advancements, AI-generated images are becoming increasingly indistinguishable from imagery depicting actual children, making the task of proving that an image depicts an actual child increasingly difficult. Thus, permitting the in-home possession of virtual CSAM, it contends, would make prosecuting the possession of actual CSAM exceedingly complicated and may insulate offenders who possess images of actual children,” warned Lee.
He further cautioned: “Along similar lines, the government worries that it will be forced to spend its limited time and resources searching for children who do not exist to the detriment of children who do exist.”
“In this case, the record is insufficient to evaluate these complex issues, and, of course, we are bound by the dictates of Free Speech Coalition. But it goes without saying that ‘[t]he prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse of children constitutes a government objective of surpassing importance.’ The stakes are high, and we must be mindful of the ever-accelerating advancements in image generation technology,” he concluded.