FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Friday, September 2. 2026
Judge: Child Sex Abuse Images Are OK If They’re Made With AI
A federal judge ruled this week that possession of images depicting child sexual abuse material (CSAM), otherwise known as child pornography, is protected by the First Amendment so long as the images are created with artificial intelligence (AI) and do not depict real people.
Seventh Circuit Appeals Judge John Z. Lee issued the ruling in a case where defendant Steven Anderegg was charged with producing, distributing, and possessing thousands of photorealistic AI child sex abuse images, as well as sending the materials to a young boy. The 13,000-plus images, many of which depicted nude, prepubescent children touching their genitals and being involved in sexual intercourse with men.
While Lee’s ruling upheld a district court dismissal of the possession charge, it appeared to include an implicit request for the Supreme Court to review its precedent on the matter, which was made well prior to advancements in AI.
“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,” Lee wrote. “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.”
Did you ever see a headline so horrible that you need to read it several times because in your mind, a sane mind, you think you’ve seen and heard things that nothing else could shock you? I think this is one of those headlines. I can already see worse ones coming though because these sick minded perverts, whether real or AI they will feed off of what they see unlil the urge grows to act out on a real child. What the hell was this judge thinking? A long time ago my grandpa told me that ‘Birds of a feather flock together’. At the time I really didn’t understand what it meant, but I sure do now. A judge that frequents the bars often has surely driven home drunk, he doesn’t think much about it, but if a defendant stands before him for drunk driving, he will think, ‘What’s the big deal? I do it all the time’. So naturally, he will be more lenient on the drunk driver. So if a judge wants to be sure perverts have access to ‘kiddie porn’ whether real or AI, both are one in the same…..Well, I think you know where this is going, right?