Are AI Images Of Child Sex Abuse Protected By First Amendment? [Op-Ed]

SEO: AI-generated child sex abuse, Steven Anderegg charges dropped 

Last week, a panel of federal judges ruled that AI-generated child sex abuse content is protected under the First Amendment. 

You know, I think Trent Reznor was onto something when he said God is dead and no one cares, because what the actual hell?

WAFB reports that 42-year-old Steven Anderegg was arrested in 2024 after distributing images of child sex abuse that he created using a text-to-image generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) model called Stable Diffusion. The Department of Justice said that thousands of artificially generated images, most of which depicted children having sex with men, were found on Anderegg’s computer. Anderegg was also accused of sending the images to a 15-year-old boy and telling him how he made the pictures.

I don’t care if it’s AI; how does that not count as distributing sexual images to a minor? 

After the DOJ arrested Anderegg, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Nicole M. Argentieri said that his arrest was a sign that they will hold people accountable who use AI to generate child sex abuse content. 

“Today’s 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,” Argentieri said in May.

Well, that didn’t happen as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit granted Anderegg’s request to have his charges dismissed. 

According to The Daily Record, Judge John Z. Lee, in the ruling for a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, urged the Supreme Court to reconsider the issue of virtual abuse material of children in the age of AI, suggesting that technological advances complicate existing legal precedent.

From WAFB: 

In his Aug. 25 decision, 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.

In his decision, however, the judge noted that while he is bound by the precedent set by the Supreme Court, he is concerned about “the lines these cases draw” and how quickly AI is evolving.

The judge also noted that AI-generated child sexual abuse material is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish from material that shows 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,” Lee wrote in his decision. 

“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,” the judge wrote. Lee went on to urge the Supreme Court to reconsider its prior rulings given how AI is rapidly outpacing existing legal precedent. 

There are so many things wrong with this. 

First, why haven’t the AI companies themselves implemented safeguards to prevent this type of material from being generated? Like, bro, I can only drop the occasional F-bomb in a YouTube video given the company’s policies. It’s absurd that I have to censor myself to keep my content and short films at a PG-13 equivalent on YouTube, but dudes are perfectly free to generate child pornography with AI. 

Considering how rapidly AI has evolved, why hasn’t Congress passed any kind of legislation regulating what kind of content can be generated through AI? 

I don’t want to hear anything about constitutional concerns. America has had no problem compromising the Fourth Amendment with the adoption of Flock cameras and our perpetual descent into a surveillance state. The government has shown a willingness to attack the First Amendment when it comes to pro-Palestine protests and drag shows, yet we can’t compromise on the First Amendment when it comes to child porn? 

The Epstein class keeps telling on itself, I swear.

All I know is something needs to be done, and it needs to be done fast. If AI only gets more sophisticated, then what happens when it gets to a point where you can’t discern what’s real and what’s artificially generated? 

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