Ep. 1831 - Insane Ruling Just Cleared A Path For The Creepiest AI Use Yet

**Matt Walsh** (0:00)
You might like to think that your texts or DMs are at least somewhat private when you communicate with people on social media platforms like Instagram. They're actually monitored automatically for any signs of criminal activity, particularly criminal activity that might endanger children. And that's why in October of 2023, Meta, which is the parent company of Instagram, was able to alert the feds about a 42-year-old man in Wisconsin named Steven Anderig. Now Meta has been in the news lately for allowing Instagram to become a haven for child predators, as you may have seen. So they've implemented all kinds of monitoring systems and algorithm changes, agreed to settlements, etc.
And in this case, they determined that Anderig was transmitting apparent child pornography to another user. Very quickly, the feds determined that Anderig was a software engineer with a background in AI models. They obtained a search warrant, seized all of Anderig's devices, including multiple cell phones and a laptop. At that point, the authorities discovered that Anderig had been entering text prompts into an AI model called stable diffusion. And the model generated thousands of explicit images depicting minors.
And more specifically, Anderig had installed some third party software on top of stable diffusion, which allowed the model to create these kinds of images. So this was not something the model would have done by itself, you know, off the shelf as it were. Anderig was then charged with producing, distributing and possessing child sexual abuse material for CSAM Watch.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:30)
A man from Holman, Wisconsin was arrested and charged from crimes relating to inappropriate AI generated images of children. The Wisconsin Department of Justice says 42 year old Steven Anderig used text to image generative AI model to create realistic images of new children.

**Matt Walsh** (1:47)
Now that report was from two years ago. It seemed like a pretty straightforward case. Certainly that's how the DOJ presented it. But last week, somewhat unexpectedly, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal of the possession charge against Anderig saying the First Amendment of the Constitution protects his right to possess obscene material in his own home. This ruling was based on two major Supreme Court precedents. The first precedent is that your home is a sacred space where you can be as obscene as you want. And additionally, the ruling was based on another Supreme Court precedent from 2002, which basically gave the green light to the possession of child pornography, as long as it was virtual child pornography, where no child was supposedly involved. Now, of course, in 2002, computer graphics, technology in general were nowhere near as advanced as they are today. They didn't have AI-generated images at all. That distinction doesn't matter, at least according to the precedent that we have today. Several of the judges made it clear that they don't like the precedent. They want the Supreme Court to change their ruling on virtual child pornography, but they ruled that as the law stands, you can possess AI-generated child pornography as long as it's contained within the home. Quoting from the ruling, the Constitution extends special safeguards to the privacy of the home. The Supreme Court has held that the state's power simply does not extend to mere possession by the individual in the privacy of his own home. If the First Amendment means anything, the court explained, it means that a state has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch.
So to be clear, Anderegh still faces charges of distributing and manufacturing this material. So he's on the hook for transmitting the material and for using his computer to create them. But if this ruling stands, he won't face a possession charge. So basically, if you're in your own home, then you can legally possess this horrific, immoral, evil material that obviously no human being should ever have. And as long as you don't send it to somebody else.
Now, it needs to be pointed out here that yes, this ruling is as incoherent as it sounds. If something is too horrible to give to someone else or to make it, then it's too horrible to possess in your own home.
And it seems pretty obvious. You should be secure in your home from any kind of unlawful government search or seizure. The government shouldn't be able to monitor what goes on inside your home whenever they want. But at the same time, the government can absolutely make it a crime to possess certain things inside your property. And this should obviously be one of them.
Nevertheless, depending on who you ask, this ruling is either a validation of our right to privacy, your home is your castle and so on. Or it's effectively the legalization of child pornography in the United States. I mean, after all, you can imagine the difficulty prosecutors might have in the future if they need to prove that a certain image is genuine as opposed to AI generated. This decision opens up many different avenues for pedophiles to fight their convictions and it could lead to a mass release of these degenerates all over the country. It's going to be the number one defense of every pedophile from this moment forward, at least in the Seventh Circuit. Oh yeah, that's not real. It's just AI, they'll say. How exactly are the prosecutors going to disprove that beyond any reasonable doubt?