US court rules possession charge unconstitutional after man was caught with AI child porn
Real and fake child porn aren’t equal, the court said.
Man in front of computer. Image by Gennadiy Naumov via Shutterstock
- A US appeals court ruled that possession charges against Steven Anderegg were unconstitutional in this case.
- The ruling focused on AI-made images of fictional children kept in a private home.
- The government argued generative AI makes real and fictional images difficult to tell apart.
- Charges involving production, distribution, and transfer to a minor remain separate from the possession issue.
Key Takeaways by nexos.ai, reviewed by Cybernews staff.
The US Court of Appeals has ruled that AI-generated porn of fictional children shouldn’t count as possession if it stays in the home.
The Seventh Circuit of the US appeals court has ruled that Steven Anderegg, who was originally charged with producing, distributing, and possessing child pornography, was not in possession of the material.
The US government previously accused Anderegg of using the generative AI model, Stable Diffusion, to create hyper-realistic images of children participating in sexually explicit acts.
He was also caught transferring this material to a minor under 16. Anderegg asked the judge to dismiss the indictment, but the request was unsuccessful.
However, the judge removed the possession charge, deeming it unconstitutional in Anderegg’s case, as the First Amendment states that one can “possess obscenity in the privacy of their home,” according to the decision.
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That’s until real children are involved, as the government is allowed to penalize the possession of pornography featuring real children.
In Anderegg’s case, the US government argued that generative AI makes it extremely hard to distinguish between real and fictional children.
Furthermore, Anderegg had a software engineering background, which allowed him to download software that helped make Stable Diffusion generate those images, according to the government.
The US government went through the federal court process to have the possession charge reinstated.
But instead, the federal court declared that “the Government may not prohibit speech on the ground that it may encourage pedophiles to engage in illegal conduct.”
Then the government went to the Court of Appeals, and the Chief Judge said that Anderegg’s circumstances make it so that the charge of possession is unconstitutional.
