A Montana man was charged with creating AI-generated child sexual abuse material by using artificial intelligence to digitally alter images of a child obtained from public social media accounts.
On August 21, 2025, Shy Herbert McCutchan, 31, was arrested in Carter County, Montana and charged with three felony counts of sexual abuse of children for possession of explicit images and videos depicting a child under age 12. According to Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen, at least one count involved the use of artificial intelligence to digitally alter images of a Montana child. The investigation began after the National Center for Missing and Endangered Children received multiple cyber tips that child sexual abuse material was uploaded to a wireless cloud backup from McCutchan's devices. Authorities discovered that McCutchan had captured images of a child from the parents' public social media account and used AI to create manipulated content, producing AI-generated child sexual abuse material. McCutchan is being held on $250,000 bond and faces up to 100 years in prison for each of the three charges. An arraignment is scheduled for September 9. The case was investigated by the Division of Criminal Investigation's Internet Crimes Against Children Unit and the Carter County Sheriff's Office.
Domain classification, causal taxonomy, severity scores, and national security assessments were LLM-classified and may contain errors.
Using AI systems to gain a personal advantage over others such as through cheating, fraud, scams, blackmail or targeted manipulation of beliefs or behavior. Examples include AI-facilitated plagiarism for research or education, impersonating a trusted or fake individual for illegitimate financial benefit, or creating humiliating or sexual imagery.
Human
Due to a decision or action made by humans
Intentional
Due to an expected outcome from pursuing a goal
Post-deployment
Occurring after the AI model has been trained and deployed