Melbourne man jailed for making child abuse materials with artificial intelligence

A Melbourne man who used artificial intelligence to generate hundreds of child abuse images has been jailed for 13 months.

The 48-year-old was sentenced on July 25 after pleading guilty to two offences, the Australian Federal Police revealed last night.

Police raided the man's home in May 2023 after linking him to someone "engaging in sexualised conversations about children and transmitting child abuse material" online.

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Investigators seized a computer tower and "disk station" and found he'd used an AI image generator to make 793 realistic child abuse images based on text inputs.

Popular cloud-based AI text-to-image generators have fairly strict blocks on terms related to child abuse material and other restricted terms but locally run alternatives exist.

Victoria Police Detective Superintendent Tim McKinney said investigators had seen an increase in the use of AI to make child abuse material.

"In some instances, real children are being used to help create these images, objectifying these innocent victims, most of whom are unaware their images are being used in this way," the Cybercrime Division detective said, in a statement.

"AI that depicts child abuse material is illegal and punishable by up to 15 years imprisonment."

Irrespective of whether the images related to real children, AFP Superintendent Bernard Geason said they were still illegal.

"Anything that depicts the abuse of children – whether that's videos, images, drawings or stories – is child abuse material," Geason said.

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"The AFP and its law enforcement partners will continue to identify and prosecute individuals creating and sharing this abhorrent content and put them before the courts."

The Melbourne man pleaded guilty to one count of producing child abuse material and one count of using a carriage service to transmit child abuse material.

Anyone with information about child abuse should contact the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation.

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