A U.S. Army soldier used AI tools to generate child sexual abuse material by morphing images of real children from social media into pornographic content, and was arrested on federal charges.
Seth Herrera, a 34-year-old U.S. Army soldier stationed at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska, was arrested and charged with federal crimes related to child sexual abuse material. Herrera is accused of using artificial intelligence and AI chatbots to generate pornography depicting minors with whom he was in contact, some the same age as his daughter. Court documents show he used images and videos of children pulled from social media pages to create violent sexual abuse content. A federal grand jury charged him with transportation, receipt, and possession of child pornography. If convicted, he faces a maximum of 20 years in prison. A forensic review of three cell phones revealed tens of thousands of videos and images depicting violent rape and sexual abuse of children dating back to March 2021. Herrera allegedly used encrypted messaging applications, joined groups trafficking child sexual abuse material, and stored materials in a password-protected app disguised as a calculator. He also made surreptitious recordings of minors undressing in his home. The FBI had previously issued warnings about the legal consequences of creating child sexual abuse material through AI.
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