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AI incident: sexual content (Dec 2024)

3 news reports Synced from source · record last edited 7 Sep 2026

In brief

An AI system built by Synthetic media generation technology developers, Synthetic image generation technology developers and 1 other and deployed by Synthetic media creators, James Strahler II and 1 other allegedly harmed Women in Ohio, Women and girls and 7 others.

Risk domain
Malicious Actors & Misuse Fraud, scams, and targeted manipulation
Occurred
Coverage
3 reportsApr 2026 - Sep 2026

What happened

An Ohio man, James Strahler II, pleaded guilty in federal court after prosecutors alleged that, from late 2024 into mid-2025, he used AI tools to create and distribute nonconsensual intimate-image forgeries as part of a broader harassment campaign targeting at least six adult women. Authorities said the conduct also involved additional CSAM material. The Department of Justice said it believes this was the first U.S. conviction under the Take It Down Act.

Editor's notes

Timeline note: According to reporting, the crimes in this case occurred between December 2024 and June 2025. The incident ID date of 12/01/2024 is an approximation. The defendant, reportedly the first person convicted under the Take It Down Act, pleaded guilty on 04/07/2026. The incident ID was created on 04/11/2026.

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 (3)

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

  1. Columbus man pleads guilty to cyberstalking exes, creating AI-generated obscene material of adults & children
    justice.gov · U.S. Attorney's Office Southern District of Ohio, United States Department of Justice
  2. Ohio man becomes first to be convicted under new AI statute for sexually explicit images
    theguardian.com · Victoria Bekiempis
  3. Columbus man sentenced to 15 years in prison for cyberstalking exes, creating AI-generated obscene material of adults & children
    justice.gov · United States Attorney's Office Southern District of Ohio

Who was involved

Alleged harmed party
Women in Ohio Women and girls Women Victims of non-consensual deepfakes Victims of deepfake child abuse Victims of deepfake abuse Privacy Minors Epistemic integrity

AI systems implicated

Synthetic media generation technologySynthetic image generation technologyDeepfake technology

Classification (MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy)

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

Linked by editors or by text similarity in the source dataset.

Incidents in the same risk subdomain

All incidents in this subdomain

Other incidents involving Synthetic media creators

Source record: incident #1448 on the AI Incident Database · all 3 reports