A federal appeals court says decades-old Supreme Court precedent forced it to protect the in-home possession of AI-generated child sexual abuse material, as judges warned that rapidly advancing technology has complicated legal lines drawn nearly 25 years ago.The ruling exposes a widening gap between Supreme Court precedent and rapidly advancing artificial intelligence.The Seventh Circuit said it was bound by a 2002 Supreme Court decision that rejected restrictions on sexually explicit depictions of fictional children when no actual child was involved in their creation.
But two judges warned that modern AI can now generate images virtually indistinguishable from material depicting the abuse of real children."Indeed, in Free Speech Coalition, the Supreme Court addressed the scope of First Amendment protections for virtual CSAM, but that was nearly twenty-five years ago, and the image-generation technology available today was likely unimaginable back then," Judge John Lee wrote."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."WORKER AT SWANKY COUNTRY CLUB ACCUSED OF USING AI TO CREATE EXPLICIT PHOTOS OF TEEN: POLICEHumans are using laptops and computers to interact with AI, helping them create, code, train AI, or analyze big data with fast, cutting-edge technology.
(Getty Images/Wanan Yossingkum)The Seventh Circuit affirmed a lower court’s dismissal of one of four charges against Steven Anderegg, who investigators said had hundreds of AI-generated sexually explicit images depicting children on devices seized from his Wisconsin home.Anderegg was charged with producing and distributing the AI-generated material, transferring it to a minor under 16, and possessing it.A federal district court dismissed only the possession charge on First Amendment grounds, leaving the other three charges intact.The Justice Department appealed that dismissal, arguin...