The FBI charged Wisconsin man Steven Anderegg with using Stable Diffusion text-to-image prompts to generate roughly 13,000 hyper-realistic sexual abuse images of children, and with sending such images to a 15-year-old boy via Instagram.
AIC-0010 S5 · Critical
First US federal charges for AI-generated child sexual abuse material (Steven Anderegg)
- Harm
- Thousands of CSAM images produced and distributed; a minor directly targeted.
- Detection
- Flagged to NCMEC over his Instagram activity, leading to FBI investigation and discovery of images on his laptop.
- Outcome
- Charged with producing, distributing and possessing CSAM (facing up to 70 years); regarded as the first US federal case for fully AI-generated CSAM; ongoing prosecution with contested First Amendment questions.
A documented entry in the AI Crime Registry, a Defici non-profit initiative. Sourced from public reporting; corrections: [email protected].