Anderegg was previously charged by Wisconsin state police with exposing a child to harmful material and sexual contact with a child under age 13. He was caught when Instagram reported his account to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The case highlights concerns raised by online child abuse experts about the potential for AI-generated imagery to be used in grooming real children, even if no real children are identifiable in the images.
Key takeaways:
- The FBI has arrested a man named Steven Anderegg for allegedly using AI to generate child sexual abuse images and distributing them to a minor.
- Anderegg allegedly used Stable Diffusion, a text-to-image generative AI model, to create thousands of explicit images of minors, which he then shared with others online.
- This is one of the first known instances where the FBI has charged someone for using AI to create child sexual abuse material.
- The case highlights the potential misuse of AI technology and the need for stricter regulations and monitoring to prevent such abuses.