A Mason High School student admitted to possessing child sexual abuse material, including AI-generated sexually explicit content of his classmates.
The 17-year-old has been adjudicated delinquent and ordered July 29 by Warren County Juvenile Court Judge Joseph Kirby to undergo treatment for problematic sexual behavior. He is also not allowed to use electronics, social media, or his cellphone.
The student was arrested in March after Mason police searched his electronics last fall, according to a department arrest report. He is the second Mason High School student this year charged in relation to AI-generated "deepfakes" − fake photos and videos of people that appear to be real, including in sexually explicit situations.
The student entered a plea of admission to 52 counts, which is different from a criminal conviction in adult court. The first 26 charges were related to possessing child sexual abuse material, and the remaining charges were for distributing videos of himself masturbating to five to 10 people. Other charges related to creating the deepfakes were dropped.
In the case involving the other Mason High School student, prosecutors also dropped charges because the student allegedly created sexually explicit deepfake images before a state law making them illegal had been passed.
Prosecutor John Rye said that investigators went through 70,000 documents of sexual content on the 17-year-old's phone, many of which involved "prepubescent females." Rye told the judge that approximately 250 of them depicted children.
Ryan Nelson, the student's defense attorney, had told the judge that his client "did not ask" for these videos. In exchange for sending videos of himself masturbating, the student would receive compressed files of porn. When he came across material including child sexual abuse material, the student said that he deleted them.
"It would download all of them to my phone," said the student. "I only saved the adult pornography."
Many of the recipients of the masturbation videos were older than the student and were convincing him to send images of himself, Nelson said.
"He is both simultaneously the defendant and the aggressor and the victim," Nelson said.
The student's father said that his son was being preyed on and groomed on the internet. When the judge brought up the AI-generated videos of the student's classmates, the student's father said that they were created with "no harm, no intent" and "only for his own use."
The judge noted that charges related to the teen's creation of the AI-generated videos were dropped because he hadn't distributed the content to others.
"The law right now says that you basically have to disseminate it. I would like to think that our legislature will change it, so that even when people will go to great lengths to create it, it's on his own phone, for his own pleasure, that that will be criminalized. But it's not yet," Kirby said in court.
After reviewing the 52 charges, Kirby turned his attention to the parents: "What were you thinking, and where have you been?"
"You basically gave him a phone, basically wide open of anything you've ever wanted. You don't give that to a juvenile and just walk away," Kirby told the parents in court. "This is what happens. I see it all the time. And everybody is surprised. I'm not. This is irresponsible."
His parents had installed parental controls on the student's device but loosened restrictions so that the student could access "relevant data" related to his academic interests in film, his father said in court.
Despite being an involved parent in his son's life, he said, his son's case reflects a larger societal issue: the widespread accessibility of AI tools that make it easier for kids to create deepfakes in the first place.
"That's a deep-rooted issue," his father said. "Yet, the app that was used is still available. That is frightening to me as a parent."
Detective Andrew Herlinger with Mason police told The Enquirer in April that he has seen a "spike in this activity" and that it "won't be the last time, for sure."
With a 4.1 GPA and admittance to the University of Ohio as a film major, the student was on a "very positive track," according to Nelson and the student's father.
"He has his whole life lined out in front of him," Nelson said.
The judge suspended a stay in the Department of Youth Services custody, but ordered the student to be committed to the Mary Haven Youth Center. The court found that receiving treatment at home would be against the student's best interests, according to the sentencing document.
"I don't doubt that you are on a trajectory of a successful life, but you have got an issue that we have got to deal with; otherwise, it's going to consume you, if it hasn't already," Kirby said to the teen in court. "Our job is to rehabilitate you so that you can go on and have a successful and happy life. That's what we do. And it starts today."
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Mason student tied to AI deepfake, child sex abuse files ordered to treatment