Illinois cracks down on AI-generated child porn
It’s no secret child porn material generated by artificial intelligence is flooding the internet. In a Fox 32 special report, Tia Ewing takes a look at how big the flood is and how prepared Illinois is to handle it.
CHICAGO – It’s no secret child porn material generated by artificial intelligence is flooding the internet.
In a Fox 32 special report, Tia Ewing takes a look at how big the flood is and how prepared Illinois is to handle it.
This summer, DeKalb County sheriff police arrested Northern Illinois University student Michael Erickson on dozens of child pornography charges.
Many were shocked to hear investigators say most of those images had the faces of real people he knew from his high school in Batavia and that they had a pornographic image attached from an artificial intelligence program.
“We have some parents that have reached out to us from that area, and we’re still trying to see if there’s more that we can identify and go from there,” said Jim Burgh, Chief Deputy of the DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office.
Reports of AI child porn surge nationwide
By the numbers:
The rate at which cases like these are being reported to law enforcement across the country is simply staggering.
“In 2023 and 2024, the NCMEC Cyber Tip Line, we received more than 7,000 child sexual exploitation reports involving G.A.I.” said Julee Doyle, Cyber Tip Line program manager with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
“So far this year, NCMEC has received nearly a half a million reports of child sexual exploitation involving G.A.I.,” she said.
Doyle says G.A.I. stands for “generated artificial intelligence.”
“It’s becoming more and more accessible to people. So, we’ve seen folks reach out to the cyber tip line to make those reports of being victimized by AI or G.A.I. We’ve also onboarded more companies to be reporting these type of instances,” Doyle said.
Teens often don’t know they’re victims
Why you should care:
But sometimes a child or teen doesn’t know they are a victim of child pornography generated by artificial intelligence.
“The middle school girls had no idea. They had no idea,” said cybercrime expert Rich Wistocki.
Wistocki is a former Naperville cybercrime police detective who now trains other officers across the country on how to do these types of investigations.
“So, we had our first case, actually my second case that I’ve encountered where these predators are going ahead, and they’re searching middle school girls’ team photos,” Wistocki said.
“They’ll throw it through an AI generator, and the AI generator will then AI generate them with new images, without clothes,” he added.
This summer, a grand jury in Gilmer County, Georgia indicted 47-year-old Ronald Richardson for allegedly using artificial intelligence to turn ordinary photographs into child sex abuse material. He is charged with 120 counts of sexually exploiting children.
According to prosecutors, there are more than 100 victims in this case. Some are in Georgia while others are out of state, including in Illinois.
Illinois passes tough new cybercrime law
“It’s a very serious matter to be treated that way because of the potential harms to young people who may be the victim of these morphed images where their actual face is being put into. A position where they actually never were in,” said Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul.
Raoul took steps to help protect Illinois children from this crime by working to get a new cybercrime law passed last year. Under it, child porn material made from artificial intelligence is every bit as illegal as the pornography made from real images.
“If you can imagine with the sophistication of artificial intelligence now, how are we to ask our law enforcement officers to distinguish between an AI-generated image. And a real image, so it removes that obstacle for our law enforcement officers. What is obscene is obscene,” Raoul said.
If you’re wondering why some Illinois lawmakers wanted this type of pornographic material deemed illegal.
“This notion that some have raised that it infringes upon first amendment rights, I strongly disagree with that, the supreme court said a long time ago that the first amendment does not protect obscenity and certainly child sexual abuse material are obscene,” Raoul said.
While there are federal laws outlawing child porn material generated with or without AI, not all states have a similar law. Illinois is one of the few that does.
Without it, law enforcement would have a painstaking task ahead of them to try to determine if a photo is real or AI.
“It’s taking out parcels of that picture, running them through Google Lens or TinEye, and being able to try to find where that picture came from, just by taking a portion of the picture,” Wistocki said.
Online child porn reports rising sharply in Illinois
In Illinois alone, reports of online child porn cases are up 11% in 2024 for the state’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.
Investigators expect that to double this year as the current wave of AI-generated child pornographic material isn’t showing signs of letting up.
“It doesn’t seem so, that’s why it’s important to create a firm deterrent to people exploiting the images of others,” Raoul said.
Tips for parents to help protect their kids
What you can do:
When it comes to trying to protect your child from becoming a victim in this case, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children says one of the best steps you can take is checking their privacy settings online.
Make sure they are limiting access to outside individuals who could use your child’s images for the wrong reasons.
If your child is a victim of child pornography generated by artificial intelligence, there are a number of resources available on how to report it and to have those images removed from the internet.
The Source: For this story, the Fox 32 Chicago Special Projects Unit interviewed national crime experts who track and investigate these cases as well as the state attorney general for the latest information on how these cases can be prosecuted.
