Hugh Nelson, 27, plead guilty on Oct. 28 to several sexual offenses including making and distributing indecent images of children and distributing “indecent pseudo-photographs of children.” He also admitted to encouraging the rape of a child.
Nelson had accepted commissions in online chatrooms for custom explicit AI-generated images of children being harmed both physically and sexually.
Manchester Police stated in their press release that Nelson used the software, Daz 3D, and used the AI function to generate images that he both sold and gave away for free over the course of 18 months. Nelson had made over $5,000 in this period.
Nelson’s offenses were uncovered after he began communicating with an undercover police officer in May 2023. He had told the officer that he took commissions from customers for the images with some requests coming from France, Italy and the United States.
While there have been previous convictions for “deepfakes”, which typically involve one face being transferred to another body, Nelson created 3D “characters” from innocent photographs of actual children. He had told the undercover office that he charged £80 to create a new character, using supplied pictures, Bolton Crown Court heard.
Sentencing for Nelson took place at Bolton Crown Court by Judge Martin Walsh said it was “impossible to know” if children had been raped because of Nelson’s images. Walsh said Nelson had no regard for the harm caused by distributing the “harrowing and sickening” material.
“There appears to have been no limit to the depth of depravity exhibited in the images that you were prepared to create and to distribute to others,” Walsh said as he passed the sentence.
Police searches of his devices also revealed that Nelson had exchanged messages with three separate individuals, encouraging the rape of children under 13.
Nelson was additionally found guilty of attempting to incite a boy under 16 to engage in a sexual act, distributing and making indecent images and possessing prohibited images.
Jeanette Smith, from the Crown Prosecution Service, warned that people who are thinking of using AI “in the worst possible way” should be “aware that the law applies equally to real indecent photographs and AI or computer-generated images of children.”
Nelson was sentenced to 18 years in prison and is required to register as a sex offender.
