He then allegedly communicated with a 15-year-old boy, describing his process for creating the images, and sent him several of the AI generated images of minors through Instagram direct messages. In some of the messages, Anderegg told Instagram users that he uses Telegram to distribute AI-generated CSAM. “He actively cultivated an online community of like-minded offenders—through Instagram and Telegram—in which he could show off his obscene depictions of minors and discuss with these other offenders their shared sexual interest in children,” the court records allege. “Put differently, he used these GenAI images to attract other offenders who could normalize and validate his sexual interest in children while simultaneously fueling these offenders’ interest—and his own—in seeing minors being sexually abused.”

I think the fact that he was promoting child sexual abuse and was communicating with children and creating communities with them to distribute the content is the most damning thing, regardless of people's take on the matter.

Umm ... That AI generated hentai on the page of the same article, though ... Do the editors have any self-awareness? Reminds me of the time an admin decided the best course of action to call out CSAM was to directly link to the source.