Man Convicted in Denmark for AI-Generated Child Abuse Images
“If the child isn’t real, then for me, it’s not illegal.” On January 8, 2025, a 29-year-old man appeared before the court in Randers, Denmark, in a novel case. Weeks earlier, police forced their way into his apartment and found him in front of his computer, caught red-handed: the screen displayed child abuse images, with the distinctive feature of having been generated using an artificial intelligence (AI) program. Investigators found 36,209 such items in his possession.
This single man, previously unknown to the police, generated several thousand images per month, which he offered on the Internet for a fee. He even boasted during the investigation of being one of the top ten in the world, capable of producing increasingly realistic images of children of all ages.
On the day of the trial, the prosecutor, annoyed by his defense strategy, asked him if he thought he had “done a good deed.” The man dared to answer yes, according to Danish public television TV 2. “I think it prevented some Internet users from looking at photos of real children. And it helped prevent real children from being abused.” The worn-out argument did not save him from prison. He was sentenced to one year and three months in detention. Some of his clients will also be implicated, as part of a vast operation led by Europol, which identified 273 suspects and arrested 25 in 19 countries, including France.
“The Threat is Growing”
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