In a landmark ruling, a sex offender, who produced over 1,000 indecent images of children, has been banned from using “AI creating tools” in the U.K.
48-year-old Anthony Dover has been banned from using AI technology — including the image generation software Stable Diffusion — for the next five years by Poole Magistrates’ Court in the U.K.
According to The Guardian, Dover has been ordered “not to use, visit or access” AI generation tools without the prior permission of police as a condition of a sexual harm prevention order imposed in February.
The ban prohibits him from using tools such as text-to-image generators, which can make realistic pictures based on a written command as well as “nudifying” websites used to make explicit “deepfakes”.
The Guardian reports that Dover — who was given a community order and a $246 (£200) fine — has also been explicitly ordered not to use Stable Diffusion software.
According to records from Dover’s sentencing hearing at the U.K. court, Stable Diffusion has been exploited by pedophiles to create hyper-realistic child sexual abuse material.
Creating Deepfake Porn is Now a Legal Crime
The ruling is the first-of-its-kind and could set a precedent for how sex offenders are monitored and stopped from using AI technology to create indecent images.
The case comes days after the U.K. announced that the creation of sexually explicit deepfake images would be made a criminal offense in the country — with anyone sharing these images facing the possibility of jail time.
Under the legislation, anyone convicted of creating such deepfakes without consent, even if they don’t intend to share the images, will face a criminal record as well as an unlimited fine under a new law.
However, if the sexually explicit deepfake image is shared more widely, then the offender could face jail time too.
According to a new report by Wired, two of the biggest deepfake pornography websites have now started blocking people trying to access them from the U.K. as a response to the country’s new law.
Meanwhile in the U.S., two teen boys were arrested in Florida for allegedly making deepfake nude images of their classmates last month — in what is believed to be the first-ever U.S. instance of criminal charges in relation to AI-generated nudes.
Senators also recently introduced a bill that would criminalize the spread of nonconsensual deepfake porn — in direct response to the sexually explicit AI-generated photos of Taylor Swift that went viral earlier this year.
Image credits: Header photo licensed via Depositphotos.