To the dismay of every caring American, pedophiles recently won a legal battle in the federal court about the limits on possession of child pornography. The Seventh Circuit Court ruled essentially that possessing AI-generated pornographic visuals of children isn’t illegal.
LifeSite News reported on the court’s ruling in favor of a WI man Steven Andregg on the charge of possessing pornographic images of children created with generative artificial intelligence, or GenAI. While these images were quite realistic, appearing like photographs of real children, they were not of real children – and that became the ground on which the court ruled to drop the possession of child porn charge against the suspect.
Since Andregg also shared these images with someone else – an underage boy – the charge of child porn distribution was not dropped. But allowing to generate and possess the AI-generated child porn visuals as one’s First Amendment right has dealt a blow to those fighting hard to defeat child sexual exploitation on every front. By using AI to bring one’s sick fantasies about children to a visual medium has been recognized as a person’s right as long as real children are not involved and the material is not distributed.
The story noted that the court judges were hesitant to rule on dropping the possession charge and Judge Judge John Lee actually urged the Supreme Court to take up the issue of virtual child sex abuse material. The court’s decision can be read online at this link.
