LONDON – A British man who used artificial intelligence to create images of child abuse was jailed for 18 years on Monday.

The court sentenced Hugh Nelson, 27, after he pleaded guilty to a number of sex offences, 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 received commissions from people in online chat rooms for explicit custom images of children both sexually and physically injured.

Police in Manchester, northern England, said they used AI software from a US company, Daz 3D, which has an “AI function” to generate images it sold to online buyers and gave away for free. The police force said it was a landmark case for its online child abuse investigation team.

The company said the license agreement for its Daz Studio 3D rendering software prohibits its use for creating images that “violate child pornography or child sexual exploitation laws or are otherwise harmful to minors.”

“We condemn the misuse of any software, including our own, for such purposes and are committed to continuously improving our ability to prevent it,” Daz 3D said in a statement, adding that its policy is to support law enforcement “as necessary. “

Bolton Crown Court, near Manchester, heard that Nelson, who has a master’s degree in graphics, also used images of real children for some of his computer-generated artwork.

Judge Martin Walsh said it was impossible to determine whether a child had been sexually abused as a result of his images, but Nelson intended to encourage others to rape children and had “no idea” how the images would be used its.

Nelson, who had no previous convictions, was arrested last year. He told police he met like-minded people on the Internet and eventually started creating images to sell.

Prosecutor Jeanette Smith said outside court it was “extremely disturbing” that Nelson was able to “take normal photographs of children and, using AI tools and a computer program, transform them and create images of the most depraved nature for sell and share them online. “

Prosecutors said the case stemmed from an investigation into AI and child sexual exploitation while the police said presented a test of existing legislation because the use of computer programs as Nelson did is so new that it is not specifically mentioned in current UK legislation.

Mirror housing similar efforts by US law enforcement to answer on one the disturbing spread of images of child sexual abuse created through artificial intelligence technology — from manipulated photographs of real children to computer-generated graphic representations of children. The Justice Department recently brought what is believed to be the first federal case involving purely AI-generated images — meaning the children depicted are not real, but virtual.