{"id":152537,"date":"2026-08-26T22:38:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-26T22:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/152537\/"},"modified":"2026-08-26T22:38:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-26T22:38:08","slug":"niu-student-used-ai-model-grok-to-create-child-sexual-abuse-material-authorities-allege-shaw-local","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/152537\/","title":{"rendered":"NIU student used AI model Grok to create child sexual abuse material, authorities allege \u2013 Shaw Local"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Northern Illinois University<\/a> student used Grok, the large language model AI assistant on Elon Musk\u2019s X.com, to create images of child sexual abuse, authorities alleged in DeKalb County<\/a> court records. <\/p>\n

A tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) in March prompted an investigation by the DeKalb County Sheriff\u2019s Office<\/a> that led deputies to discover nine files containing child sexual abuse materials, records show.<\/p>\n

On Aug. 18, Alan Salazar, 22, of DeKalb<\/a>, was charged with nine counts of producing child sexual abuse material of children appearing to be under the age of 13 \u2013 all Class X felonies \u2013 according to court records. If he\u2019s convicted, he could face up to 30 years in prison. <\/p>\n

Deputies alleged that Salazar showed them the images and admitted to using Grok to make them, according to court records.<\/p>\n

The image reported on March 5 to the sheriff\u2019s office by the NCMEC appeared to be a photo taken in a dorm room, according to a synopsis filed in court. The cybertip was connected to IP addresses with NIU and T-Mobile. <\/p>\n

\u201cDue to the nature of the photos and the IP address resolving to NIU, I was concerned that there may be a child in one of the dorm rooms being used to create child sex abuse material or CSAM,\u201d a sheriff\u2019s deputy wrote in the synopsis. <\/p>\n

Deputies did not find evidence of a child being in Salazar\u2019s dorm. However, they did find nine digital files of the illicit material that were created using AI prompts. <\/p>\n

All prompts used to create those images, which used pictures from Salazar\u2019s dorm room, included the words \u201cbaby girls,\u201d \u201ckid,\u201d \u201cgirl,\u201d or \u201cboy,\u201d and contained phrasing that can be implied as sexual, authorities alleged in the court filing. <\/p>\n

The NIU Police Department told deputies that Salazar\u2019s phone number, provided by T-Mobile, matched the number associated with the IP address from the cybertip. Salazar was a resident of Neptune East dorm, 740 Lucinda Ave, DeKalb, at the time of the investigation. <\/p>\n

University officials didn\u2019t respond to questions about Salazar\u2019s current enrollment status by press time Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Salazar\u2019s Lake County-based defense attorney Jerald Novak also didn\u2019t respond to a request for comment by press time.<\/p>\n

Salazar is not the first person in the U.S. to be charged with using Grok o or other AI to create child sexual abuse material. <\/p>\n

Between Dec. 29, 2025, and Jan. 8, Grok was used to create an estimated 23,000 sexualized images of children, according to research from the Center for Countering Digital Hate. A class action lawsuit against Musk\u2019s AI company, SpaceXAI<\/a>, was filed on March 16 in the San Jose division of the U.S. District Court\u2019s Northern California District. <\/p>\n

On June 2, 2025, Michael B. Erickson, of Batavia<\/a>, also an NIU student at the time, was charged after police searched his dorm room<\/a> and allegedly found more than 20,000 images depicting child sexual abuse. Police alleged he used AI and photos of real people he knew to create them, according to court records. Erickson pleaded not guilty on July 17, 2025, to 21 counts of possession, creation and dissemination of child sexual abuse materials, records show. He was released with conditions pending trial, though no trial date has yet been set as of Wednesday.<\/p>\n

On Aug. 25, during his pretrial release hearing, Associate Judge Stephanie Klein denied a petition from the DeKalb County State\u2019s Attorney\u2019s office to keep Salazar in jail while he awaits trial, records show. <\/p>\n

Salazar was given a no-contact order and granted pretrial release, according to court records. He is next due to appear in court at 9 a.m. on Oct. 1. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Northern Illinois University student used Grok, the large language model AI assistant on Elon Musk\u2019s X.com, to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":152538,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[25,2165,199,53375,45487,74334,6364,774,74332,74333,2899],"class_list":["post-152537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-xai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-breaking","tag-crime","tag-crime-and-courts","tag-dekalb-county","tag-dekalb-county-front-headlines","tag-grok","tag-local-news","tag-local-crime","tag-shaw-local-front-headlines","tag-xai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152537\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}