AI just keeps on giving. . .

Child pornography without a child.  Is it wrong?  Well, we are far removed from the time when right or wrong mattered.  Is it legal?   On August 25 of this year, Judge John Z. Lee of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled that the First Amendment does indeed protect the right of Americans to possess AI-generated child pornography.  In Wisconsin, Steven Anderegg was charged by the Justice Department in 2024 “with producing, distributing, and possessing visual depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct and transferring such material to a minor under the age of sixteen.”  This was not a small matter but many thousands of very realistic images.  In 2025, a Western District of Wisconsin judge dismissed Anderegg’s possession charge while allowing the producing and distributing charges to remain in place.  A few months ago, minors in TN were charged with using AI to make nude images using the faces of classmates.  It was a narrow ruling applied only to the use of possession statute 18 U.S.C. § 1466A(b)(1) in the possession charge but it does highlight the new ground which AI is plowing as our society defines what is legal and what is not in the realm of AI created images.

It did not begin with AI.  When the day came that our courts decided, probably with public opinion on its side, that pornography was protected speech, the whole world changed.  Indeed, we subjected a new generation of youth to a sexual maturity in which their desires were also shaped by pornography and often extreme violence and perverse pornographic images and videos.  So it did not take long before AI offered the opportunity to expand what was possible and that included the use of images created of children.  What we fail to realize is that even if no child is involved and the images and videos are entirely AI, these will effectively change the landscape even further and have a profound impact upon the maturing minds and desires of young people.  Simply saying something is legal does not seem to be saying much but in a time when legality stands without morality to define what people see and how that influences desires, it is enough. Things are not going to get better.  They assuredly will get worse.  In the balance lies the development of healthy youth and the easy access and alluring temptation being provided them by new technology that blurs reality and erases boundary lines.  What will we do as a society and what can we do as Christians within that society to protect our children and promote an honest and healthy environment for our kids?  That ought to be the question before us.  Not everything legal is moral.  In this case it seems fairly obvious that what some have said is legal is extremely dangerous and evil.  The use of AI in gaming as well as other entertainment platforms will only encourage its use and eventual acceptance in pornography.  There has to be a way of limiting or identifying this menace.