{"id":158373,"date":"2026-09-01T21:43:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T21:43:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/158373\/"},"modified":"2026-09-01T21:43:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T21:43:12","slug":"wisconsin-judge-dismisses-charges-in-ai-generated-child-sexual-abuse-material-case-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/158373\/","title":{"rendered":"Wisconsin judge dismisses charges in AI-generated child sexual abuse material case"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Gray News) \u2014 A federal judge in Wisconsin has ruled that AI-generated child sexual abuse material is protected by the First Amendment, but he voiced concerns about these kinds of cases.<\/p>\n

The decision comes in a case against a Wisconsin man who was arrested in 2024 for producing, distributing and possessing AI-generated child sexual abuse material.<\/p>\n

According to the Department of Justice<\/a>, 42-year-old Steven Anderegg used a text-to-image generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) model called Stable Diffusion to create thousands of realistic images of young children.<\/p>\n

Many of the images depicted naked children engaging in sexual intercourse with men, the DOJ said.<\/p>\n

The DOJ said thousands of images were found on Anderegg\u2019s computer.<\/p>\n

Anderegg was also accused of sending some of the images to a 15-year-old boy and telling the boy how he created the images using AI.<\/p>\n

At the time of Anderegg\u2019s arrest, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Nicole M. Argentieri said the DOJ was prepared to hold him accountable.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday\u2019s announcement sends a clear message: using AI to produce sexually explicit depictions of children is illegal, and the Justice Department will not hesitate to hold accountable those who possess, produce, or distribute AI-generated child sexual abuse material,\u201d Argentieri said in May.<\/p>\n

But last week, Judge John Z. Lee of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit granted the defendant\u2019s motion to dismiss the charges.<\/p>\n

In his Aug. 25 decision<\/a>, the judge referred to two U.S. Supreme Court decisions from 1969 and 2002. The first ruled that people have a right to keep obscenity in the privacy of their homes, and the second ruled that child sex abuse material that does not depict real children is not child pornography and is protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.<\/p>\n

In his decision, however, the judge noted that while he is bound by the precedent set by the Supreme Court, he is concerned about \u201cthe lines these cases draw\u201d and how quickly AI is evolving.<\/p>\n

The judge also noted that AI-generated child sexual abuse material is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish from material that shows real children.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe 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,\u201d Lee wrote in his decision. \u201cThis case illuminates how this evolving technology complicates the lines drawn by the Supreme Court \u2026 that was nearly twenty-five years ago, and the image-generation technology available today was likely unimaginable back then. 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 Gray Local Media, Inc. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Gray News) \u2014 A federal judge in Wisconsin has ruled that AI-generated child sexual abuse material is protected…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":158374,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,77087,34441,77095,11499,25,5322,11907,20403,18920,77086,11760,294,77090,77092,77088,75384,77091,51199,77089,77093,41984,1449,77094,2122],"class_list":["post-158373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-ai-children","tag-ai-generated-photos","tag-ai-generated-child-sexual-abuse-material","tag-ai-generated-content","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-child-abuse","tag-child-sex-abuse","tag-court-case","tag-decision","tag-fake-children","tag-first-amendment","tag-genai","tag-judge-john-z-lee","tag-judges-decision","tag-real-children","tag-ruling","tag-rulling","tag-stable-diffusion","tag-steven-anderegg","tag-steven-anderegg-case","tag-supreme-court","tag-u-s-court-of-appeals","tag-virtual-child-abuse-images","tag-wisconsin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158373","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=158373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/158374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}