If a high school kid makes an AI fake nude of a female classmate, can they be arrested for child porn and have a permanent record?
I just read 2 stories in a row in one of my news feeds about pockets of this happening throughout the USA and one is middle school aged.
Is there a line to be drawn or should all fake nudes of anyone under 18 face legal penalties no matter the age of the person doing it?
I have a daughter that is 27 now and if this happened to her I would be doing everything I could to hold the person making the fakes accountable.
Fake nudes of real people are generally illegal, regardless of if the nude is real, or photoshopped, or AI generated.
People have been arrested and convicted for AI porn of real people.
For now convictions seem to be confined to people who have already created/used more traditional CSAM (hidden cameras). This could just be because it is hard to catch someone simply generating images, so if someone with no record would be jailed for just fake nudes remains an open question. Fake nudes of fictional people are also very much an open question. Being very new technology, new laws have yet to be made, so feel free to write to lawmakers about where the line should be.
The short answer is that we don’t know. It has long been a legal grey area when depicting porn of underage characters that are clearly not real. There’s the classic “she’s actually 1000 she just looks 6 years old” and “all characters depicted are at least 18 [despite all of them being in various stages of high school]”. American politicans are by and large way out of date with modern technology and cannot be expected to rule competently on the subject. Is the AI nude of a real person “revenge porn” or constitutionally protected free speech? People have been drawing fan art of underage celebs having sex with high detail for a long time (see Harry Potter/Twilight rule 34). Ultimately congress will need to make laws about this or courts will have to interpret a previous ruling as applying to these images. Unfortunately due to the Streisand Effect whomever is at the unfortunate center of this shitstorm will be forever made into pornographic material so we understand the general hesitation to get involved
Very short answer with little nuance:
Cops can arrest you for anything and are not required to know the laws. A court will sort that out. If there isn’t a specific law, the court can convict based on similar laws.
