Your fact-checks will appear here
Family name
Federal statute 18 U.S.C. §2256 is broadly interpreted by federal agencies and many legal commentators to cover , but legal uncertainty remains for purely synthetic images not tied to real children. T...
Prosecutors have begun using AI-chatbot logs and other AI-related digital traces as evidence in criminal cases outside of CSAM prosecutions, and reporting shows growing legal and policy activity aroun...
Courts and scholars defending deepfake and AI-generated sexual content against statutory bans have mainly invoked core First Amendment doctrines: that synthetic expression is speech, content-based res...
Federal prosecutors have charged people for creating, distributing, or possessing AI-generated CSAM, and at least one defendant successfully won dismissal of a possession count on First Amendment grou...
Courts have addressed defenses for accidental or inadvertent viewing or possession of child pornography, with judicial rulings and legal commentary repeatedly emphasizing that for many child‑pornograp...
have split along lines of technology and mens rea: circuits have generally upheld prosecutions based on hyperlinks and active stings while taking a more cautious approach where possession depends on ,...
Courts demand that AI-assisted CSAM detection meet traditional evidence and Fourth Amendment standards: reliable methodology, known error rates and validation, transparent chain-of-custody and human c...
Text-only sexual writing that depicts minors is treated far more permissively under U.S. law and constitutional doctrine than visual depictions: federal statutes and precedent focus criminal liability...
Yes. Federal law makes possession and even “access with intent to view” child sexual abuse material (CSAM) a crime (18 U.S.C. §§2252, 2252A), and state laws overwhelmingly criminalize possession and o...
Creating, distributing, or possessing AI-generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM) has been treated as illegal by many federal agencies and advocates, but key constitutional and statutory nuances m...
Federal prosecutions for AI‑generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM) have prompted defenses grounded in the First Amendment, obscenity doctrine, and assertions that no real child was involved; jud...
The materials provided show that the controversy in Docket No. 93952, People v. Alexander, arose after a trial court concluded that sections 11‑20.1(a) and 11‑20.1(a) of the Illinois child‑pornography...
The core legal flashpoint in People v. Alexander (docket No. 93952) concerned whether two provisions of Illinois’s child-pornography statute—sections 11‑20.1(a) and 11‑20.1(a)—were unconstitutionally ...
Illinois appellate and supreme-court jurisprudence has treated virtual or cartoon depictions of minors in sexual contexts as a legally fraught area that sits at the intersection of state obscenity and...
The PROTECT Act of 2003 has been used to prosecute cases involving animated or drawn depictions of minors primarily by criminalizing “obscene” virtual child pornography and images that are “virtually ...
The Supreme Court in Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition struck down portions of the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996 (CPPA) that broadly banned “virtual” child pornography, holding those provis...
Federal and state courts have so far split treatment between AI-created sexual images that trace to real children—treated as traditional child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and aggressively prosecuted—...
Courts addressing AI-generated CSAM have grafted the familiar Miller “ordinary person” obscenity framework onto novel synthetic imagery, asking whether an average person applying contemporary communit...
Courts decide whether an image is "virtually indistinguishable" from a real child by applying statutory language, Supreme Court precedents, jury fact-finding and expert technical evidence to assess wh...
The federal executive has long relied on ad hoc special‑attorney or special‑counsel appointments—ranging from Teddy Roosevelt’s early 20th century special prosecutors to modern special counsels like M...