The first man in the country to be convicted of violating the Take It Down Act was sentenced to 15 years in prison on Tuesday, after investigators found more than 3,000 real and AI-generated abuse images on his devices.
According to a press release from the U.S. Attorney's Office, Southern District of Ohio, 38 year old Ohio man James Strahler was sentenced to 15 years in prison for “cybercrimes that included both real and AI-generated sexually explicit images and threats of violence to numerous victims.”
Strahler created “more than 700 images of both real victims and animated persons and posted them to a website dedicated to child sexual abuse,” according to the Attorney’s Office. “An additional 2,400 images and videos on his phone were flagged as depicting nudity, morphed child sexual abuse material or violence.” He created and posted AI-generated images of minor boys “from his community,” showing them engaged in sex acts with their mothers and grandmothers.