The law is clear, according to prosecutor Sara Sundström, who has filed charges with the Uppsala District Court, as previously reported by UNT.
In the preparatory work on child pornography offenses, it is clear that it can also be punishable to possess images that do not depict a real child, says Sundström to TT.
However, for it to be illegal, the images must be realistic.
You have to make an assessment, and a reviewer at the police has done so. Then, they have concluded that it involves 16 realistic AI images with child pornographic material, she says.
The accused man has denied the crime and claimed that the purpose of creating the images, which were found on his mobile phone, was to obtain illustrations for a book.
"He wanted to have images that looked real for his book, NN also states that there were other images that were characters for his books in the phone," the man said in the interrogation, according to the preliminary investigation protocol.
Thomas Andersson, an investigator at the children's rights organization Ecpat Sweden, says that AI development has progressed rapidly and that the images are becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish from real photos.
He emphasizes that the material is not a "better" alternative to real images, but something that must be combated with force.
The images normalize assault material and sexual assaults against children.
Real assaults
Consumption of assault material can be what leads a person to take the step to commit real physical assaults, says Andersson.
And there is nothing to suggest that AI-generated assault material does not work in the same way as traditional assault material in that process.
Ecpat Sweden also sees how AI tools are used to violate real children. Among other things, they can be used to manipulate ordinary images of children into assault material.
There are also examples of perpetrators who use AI to create new images based on assault material of real children.
And it becomes a double violation for the victim, says Andersson.
AI cases are still rare in court, but will likely increase as the material becomes more common. Prosecutor Sara Sundström is only aware of one previous conviction in Sweden for AI-generated assault material.
In that case, a man who created images of children with an AI tool was convicted of attempted child pornography. The crime was classified as attempted because the images had one or more flaws that made them not appear realistic.
Anyone who possesses, distributes, or spreads images that "depict children in pornographic images" can be convicted of child pornography.
For minor offenses, the penalty is fines or imprisonment for up to six months, for normal-grade offenses, the penalty is imprisonment for up to two years. If the crime is considered gross, the penalty is at least one year's imprisonment and up to six years.
Source: The Penal Code
