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AI incident: sexual content (Apr 2023)

7 news reports Snapshot 7 Sep 2026

In brief

An AI system built by Deepfake Technology Developers and deployed by Steven Larouche allegedly harmed Children (Faces Used In Deepfakes), Victims Of Child Sexual Abuse (Bodies Used In Videos) and 1 other.

Risk domain
Malicious Actors & Misuse Fraud, scams, and targeted manipulation
Occurred
Coverage
7 reportsApr 2023 - May 2023

What happened

A Quebec man was sentenced to over three years in prison for using AI deepfake technology to produce synthetic child pornography. He created videos by superimposing children's faces onto other bodies, adding to the challenge of policing digital sexual exploitation. This case marks a disturbing use of AI in criminal activities, raising concerns about digital safety and the vulnerability of children's images online.

Laws that address this harm

Policy angle: Classified under Malicious Actors & Misuse (Fraud, scams, and targeted manipulation) in the MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy; 5 recorded instruments address this use case.

Matched from the record's risk domain and country to the instruments recorded here. A reviewer can correct the match in the repository (data/external/incident_overrides.yaml).

News reports (7)

Titles link to the original publisher; report text is not reproduced here.

  1. Quebec man who created synthetic, AI-generated child pornography sentenced to prison
    cbc.ca · Jacob Serebrin
  2. Quebec man sentenced to prison for creating AI-generated, synthetic child pornography
    montrealgazette.com · The Canadian Press
  3. Quebec man sentenced to prison for creating AI-generated, synthetic child pornography
    thestar.com · Jacob Serebrin
  4. Man Who Produced AI-Generated Child Pornography Sentenced to 8 Years in Prison
    complex.com · Louis Pavlakos
  5. Canadian man sentenced to prison over AI-generated child pornography: report
    foxnews.com · Bradford Betz
  6. Canadian Man Jailed for Creating AI Child Porn in Country's First Ever Case
    petapixel.com · Pesala Bandara
  7. AI-Generated Deepfake Videos of Child Porn Send Shockwaves! Creating Country's First Ever AI Child Porn Lands Quebec Man in Jail
    latestly.com · Team Latestly

Who was involved

Alleged deployer
Steven Larouche
Alleged harmed party
Children (Faces Used In Deepfakes), Victims Of Child Sexual Abuse (Bodies Used In Videos), General Public

Classification (MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy)

Causal entity
Human
Intent
Intentional
Timing
Post-deployment
Harm level
—
Sectors
—
Countries
—

Risk entries describing this failure mode

Entries from the MIT AI Risk Repository coded to subdomain 4.3.

  • Cheating/plagiarism

    "Cheating/plagiarism - Use of another person’s or group’s words or ideas without consent and/or acknowledgement."

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • IP/copyright loss

    "IP/copyright loss - Misuse or abuse of an individual or organisation’s intellectual property, including copyright, trademarks, and patents."

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Financial and business

    "Financial and Business - Use or misuse of a technology system in a manner that damages the financial interests of an individual or group, or which causes strategic, operational, legal or financial harm to a business or...

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Impersonation/identity theft

    "Impersonation/identity theft - Theft of an individual, group or organisation’s identity by a third-party in order to defraud, mock or otherwise harm them."

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Dehumanisation/objectification

    "Dehumanisation/objectification - Use or misuse of a technology system to depict and/or treat people as not human, less than human, or as objects."

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Defamation/libel/slander

    "Defamation/libel/slander - Use of a technology system to create, facilitate or amplify false perception(s) about an individual, group, or organisation."

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Misinformation and Manipulation

    "Recent studies have demonstrated that LLMs can be exploited to craft deceptive narratives with levels of persuasiveness similar to human-generated content (Pan et al., 2023b; Spitale et al., 2023), to fabri- cate fake n...

    Foundational Challenges in Assuring Alignment and Safety of Large Language Models (Anwar2024)

  • Cybersecurity

    "LLMs may exacerbate cybersecurity risks in various ways (Newman, 2024). Firstly, LLMs may significantly amplify the effectiveness of deceptive operations aimed at tricking people into disclosing sensitive information or...

    Foundational Challenges in Assuring Alignment and Safety of Large Language Models (Anwar2024)

Incidents in the same risk subdomain

All incidents in this subdomain

Source record: incident #604 on the AI Incident Database · all 7 reports