{"id":2651339,"date":"2026-08-28T18:02:02","date_gmt":"2026-08-28T22:02:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignfederal-judge-child-sex-abuse-images-are-ok-as-long-as-theyre-made-with-ai\/"},"modified":"2026-08-28T18:32:45","modified_gmt":"2026-08-28T22:32:45","slug":"utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignfederal-judge-child-sex-abuse-images-are-ok-as-long-as-theyre-made-with-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignfederal-judge-child-sex-abuse-images-are-ok-as-long-as-theyre-made-with-ai\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge: Child Sex Abuse Images Are OK If They&#8217;re Made With AI"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">24<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Futm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignfederal-judge-child-sex-abuse-images-are-ok-as-long-as-theyre-made-with-ai%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2651339&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>A recent court ruling by a federal judge has declared that possessing AI-generated images depicting child sexual abuse material (CSAM) is protected by the First Amendment, as long as the images do not depict real children. the case involved Steven Anderegg, who was charged with creating and sharing photorealistic AI images of child abuse, including thousands of such images. The judge&#8217;s decision upheld the dismissal of charges related to possession but raised questions about existing legal precedents, particularly given the advancements in AI technology.<\/p>\n<p>Judge John Z. lee referenced past Supreme Court cases, such as Stanley v.Georgia and Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition,which previously established protections for private possession of obscene materials and allowed virtual child pornography,respectively. These rulings suggest that current U.S. law effectively permits virtual CSAM as protected speech under the First Amendment, despite the moral and ethical concerns surrounding such content.<\/p>\n<p>the ruling highlights the complexity of legal standards regarding obscenity, especially as AI enables the creation of highly realistic images of children that do not involve real victims. While the First Amendment offers broad protections, the judge acknowledged the potential for future legal challenges as technology continues to evolve, with some justices previously warning that advancements could complicate efforts to combat illegal CSAM. The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/supreme-court-wont-help-peter-navarro-shield-emails-from-nara-washington-examiner\/\" title=\"... won\u2019t help Peter Navarro shield em...ls from NARA - Washington Examiner\">case underscores ongoing debates<\/a> about how existing legal frameworks should adapt to rapidly advancing AI technologies that pose new challenges in the realm of digital safety and child protection.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p><em>Editor\u2019s note: This article discusses a court case dealing with possession and distribution of sexually explicit images.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Seventh Circuit Appeals Judge John Z. Lee issued the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.courtlistener.com\/docket\/69727123\/57\/united-states-v-steven-anderegg\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">ruling<\/a> 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 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/archives\/opa\/media\/1352611\/dl?inline\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">13,000-plus<\/a> images, many of which depicted nude, prepubescent children touching their genitals and being involved in sexual intercourse with men.<\/p>\n<p>While Lee\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>\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. \u201cGiven 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<p>Lee noted the controlling precedent in <em>Stanley v. Georgia<\/em>, a 1969 unanimous Warren Court opinion written by Justice Thurgood Marshall <a href=\"https:\/\/www.oyez.org\/cases\/1968\/293\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">claiming<\/a> private possession of obscene materials was protected by the First Amendment, and <em>Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition<\/em>, where a 6-3 court in 2002 effectively <a href=\"https:\/\/www.oyez.org\/cases\/2001\/00-795\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">allowed<\/a> virtual child pornography. Those cases, Lee wrote, mean \u201cwe must affirm.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The decision makes clear an untenable web of Supreme Court precedent on what it considers \u201cobscenity,\u201d and how permissible it might be, based on the content. Right now, as the decision makes clear, American law \u2014 claiming a constitutional protection of free speech \u2014 effectively allows production and possession of highly realistic child pornography, so long as it is virtual.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cObscenity, along with certain other categories of speech, has historically fallen \u2018outside the scope of the First Amendment,&#8217;\u201d Lee wrote. \u201cAlthough the precise meaning of \u2018obscenity\u2019 is difficult to pin down, the Supreme Court has offered the following articulation: \u2018[S]peech is obscene to the public at large \u2014 and thus proscribable \u2014 if (a) \u2018the average person, applying contemporary community standards[,] would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest\u2019; (b) \u2018the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/mike-lee-introduces-two-bills-to-clamp-down-on-internet-pornography\/\" title=\"Mike Lee Introduces Two Bills To Clamp Down On Internet Pornography\">sexual conduct specifically defined<\/a> by the applicable state law\u2019; and (c) \u2018the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>However, Lee continued, there are more protections for obscenity within the confines of the home, and the Supreme Court decided that the government has \u201cbroad power to regulate obscenity\u201d but that \u201cpower simply does not extend to mere possession by the individual in the privacy of his own home.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>\u201c\u2018If the First Amendment means anything,\u2019 the Court explained, \u2018it means that a State has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch,\u2019\u201d Lee wrote.<\/p>\n<p>There were more cases pertaining to possession in the home and how that creates a market for CSAM, but until 2002 the jurisprudence addressed the issue of actual children in the images. That year the pornography industry\u2019s trade association, Free Speech Coalition, sued to challenge the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996, which criminalized production of CSAM \u201cwithout using any real children\u201d \u2014 or, virtual CSAM.<\/p>\n<p>The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the pornography industry, which argued that its members\u2019 First Amendment rights were chilled by the prohibition. \u201cTaking great care to note that the materials at issue did not involve actual children, the Supreme Court agreed,\u201d Lee wrote.<\/p>\n<p>The court also heavily narrowed the government interest only to \u201cprotecting the children exploited by the production process,\u201d instead of trying to eliminate the market for CSAM entirely, as the government argued, claiming that the virtual images would actually replace the market for real images: \u201cFew pornographers would risk prosecution by abusing real children if fictional, computerized images would suffice.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Supreme Court was \u201cunpersuaded,\u201d Lee wrote, by the government\u2019s argument that CSAM \u201cwhets the appetites of pedophiles and encourages them to engage in illegal conduct.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Making an argument for the Supreme Court to review its precedent, Lee noted that Justices Sandra Day O\u2019Connor and Clarence Thomas, both of whom concurred in <em>Free Speech Coalition<\/em>, forecasted that the advancement of technology would make it difficult for the government to prosecute CSAM.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf technological advances thwart prosecution of \u2018unlawful speech,\u2019 the Government may well have a compelling interest in barring or otherwise regulating some narrow category of \u2018lawful speech\u2019 in order to enforce effectively laws against pornography made through the abuse of real children,\u201d Thomas wrote in his concurrence.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAccording to some experts, that day may have arrived. Recent data suggests that the influx of AI-generated images reported to the NCMEC CyberTipline imposes increasing burdens on law enforcement,\u201d Lee wrote. \u201cWhat is more, AI-generated CSAM may also present other challenges not raised by the government in this appeal. For example, researchers have found that \u2018a major dataset used for training image-generating AI contained hundreds of CSAM images.\u2019 Thus, unlike the virtual CSAM at issue in <em>Free Speech Coalition<\/em>, the market for AI-generated virtual CSAM images may impact the demand for actual CSAM on which the AI models can train.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe stakes are high, and we must be mindful of the ever-accelerating advancements in image generation technology,\u201d Lee concluded.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>      Breccan F. Thies is the White House correspondent for The Federalist. He is a co-recipient of the 2025 Dao Prize for Excellence in Investigative Journalism. As an investigative journalist, he previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AI child porn protected by First Amendment, court rules<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":179,"featured_media":2651341,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/1280px-Artificial_Intelligence_AI.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546,33651],"tags":[53548,39057,54392,39490,33391],"class_list":["post-2651339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist","category-the-western-journal","tag-ai-generated-content","tag-child-abuse","tag-digital-ethics","tag-legal-rulings","tag-online-safety"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/1280px-Artificial_Intelligence_AI.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2651339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/179"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2651339"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2651339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2651354,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2651339\/revisions\/2651354"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2651341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2651339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2651339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2651339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}