„AI and Illegal Images: Catching Up to a Dangerous Trend”

Artificial Intelligence is making it easier for people to create disturbing images of children. These fake pictures are beginning to spread online. Law enforcement is working hard to stop this. They say that making or sharing such images is a serious crime. Justice Department officials explained that people using AI tools to create these harmful images will be investigated and prosecuted. They pointed out that there’s a real-life child psychiatrist who was convicted for manipulating a school photo to make girls appear nude. Kids are also getting affected, even if they aren’t physically harmed. A 17-year-old actor, Kaylin Hayman, who starred in a Disney Channel show, had her face digitally superimposed onto bodies performing sex acts. She felt like a part of her had been taken away. Experts say that AI models available online make it easy for offenders to produce these explicit pictures. They share tips on dark web communities about how to use AI tools for this purpose. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children is receiving more reports about AI-generated content. It’s becoming harder to tell if an image is real or AI-generated due to their realism. Law enforcement says they have tools under federal law to tackle this problem. They’ve even brought a case against a software engineer for creating photorealistic images of kids in sexually explicit scenes. It’s challenging to control AI misuse after it’s already widely available, experts note. More needs to be done to safeguard technology from the start.