Distributing artificial intelligence-generated child sexual abuse material to other individuals is federally prosecutable

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United States federal courts of appeals have consistently upheld the constitutionality of federal child sexual abuse material statutes applied to digitally morphed imagery depicting identifiable, real children

In United States v. Anderegg, the district court declined to extend Stanley v. Georgia First Amendment protections to charges of producing or distributing obscene imagery depicting imaginary children

Following Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, the United States Congress passed the federal child obscenity statute criminalizing obscene, sexually explicit depictions of real or imaginary children

Producing, receiving, and distributing artificial intelligence-generated child sexual abuse material are not activities protected by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution

In United States v. Anderegg, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal of a federal charge for purely in-home, private possession of obscene imagery depicting imaginary children

In Briana Pfefferkorn and Cindy Diniok's study of 71 federal artificial intelligence child sexual abuse material prosecutions, 8 defendants raised First Amendment constitutional defenses

Generating artificial intelligence child sexual abuse material independently can result in federal charges for production

Law enforcement agencies face operational difficulties determining whether an artificial intelligence-altered image depicts a child requiring rescue or an altered image from an existing historical abuse series

In Briana Pfefferkorn and Cindy Diniok's study of 71 federal prosecutions explicitly involving AI CSAM, 9 cases involved exclusively fully synthetic imagery depicting non-existent children

Research teams at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are developing methods to detect whether software uploaded to model-hosting platforms can generate child sexual abuse material without producing illicit images

Federal criminal cases explicitly identifying artificial intelligence-generated child sexual abuse material rose from two in 2022 to 40 in 2025

In Briana Pfefferkorn and Cindy Diniok's study of 71 federal prosecutions explicitly involving AI CSAM, 32 cases involved digitally morphed imagery

Matthew Anderegg was the only defendant among 71 federal AI CSAM cases to achieve a partial dismissal based on a First Amendment challenge

Downloading artificial intelligence-generated child sexual abuse material from the internet to a personal device is federally prosecutable as receiving child sexual abuse material

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children operates the CyberTipline to receive reports of suspected child sexual abuse material from online service providers

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children conducts child victim identification operations in partnership with domestic federal and international law enforcement agencies

In Briana Pfefferkorn and Cindy Diniok's study of 71 federal artificial intelligence child sexual abuse material prosecutions, 65 cases resulted in criminal convictions

In Briana Pfefferkorn and Cindy Diniok's study of 71 federal artificial intelligence child sexual abuse material prosecutions, 59 defendants entered guilty pleas

Approximately one-third of the federal artificial intelligence child sexual abuse material cases studied by Briana Pfefferkorn and Cindy Diniok originated from CyberTipline reports

In Briana Pfefferkorn and Cindy Diniok's study of 71 federal artificial intelligence child sexual abuse material prosecutions, six defendants were convicted at trial