Kane County, Illinois, man charged with turning images of children into pornography with AI
A Kane County, Illinois, man stood charged Thursday with gathering real pictures of children and using artificial intelligence to make them into pornography.
Jeremy Batterman was charged with 40 counts of production of child sexual abuse material and four counts of obscene depiction of a purported child — all felonies.
Authorities began investigating Batterman after receiving a tip from the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.
The Kane County State's Attorney's office said Batterman used AI to produce sexually explicit images of children, some of them under the age of 13. He is accused of using AI to alter images of real children, and also of generating AI child sex abuse material from scratch.
A CyberTip to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children brought Batterman to the attention of law enforcement. A three-month investigation followed, and charges were filed against Batterman on Wednesday, Aug. 12, prosecutors said.
Batterman was taken into custody by Kane County Sheriff's police the following day.
Prosecutors said Batterman took photos of children as young as 11 years old at Lord of Life Church in Elburn and Thompson Middle School in st. Charles, then used AI technology to make those pictures into child pornography, otherwise known as child sex abuse material.
"To me, AI is horrifying in terms of what it possibly can do," said Kane County State's Attorney Jamie Mosser.
Mosser said Batterman used a number of AI apps available to the public to create the images.
"This technology just keeps increasing. We're seeing an absolute ton of it. I think it's horrifying that any app would be able to
make it seem as if somebody is undressed or doing acts like this, but it's easily accessible to adults and even to juveniles," she said.
Thousands of reports like this come into the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children every three months.
"Just in the last two to three years, we have seen a rapid spike in these types of cases, and each year it exceeds what we saw the year prior," said Michelle DeLaune, president and CEO of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
The trend concerns Mosser, who's also a parent.
"One of my children goes to the school that the photographs were taken from. It's on many levels that I feel for the children who were involved in this and the parents who had to be contacted and told about this," she said.
At home, Mosser warns her kids about the dangers of AI, but at work she can do something about it.
"As a prosecutor, I absolutely love my job, because these are the exact type of people that I want to see go to prison as long as possible," she said.
Right now, prosecutors don't believe Batterman shared any of the AI-generated porn online. Mosser's office is still working to contact families of potential victims.
Officials said the case is a good reminder for parents to monitor what their kids share on social media. However, in this case, Batterman is accused of taking photos at public places, so the reality is this crime is hard to prevent.
On Friday, Aug. 14, Batterman appeared for a pretrial detention hearing and was ordered held in custody. He is due back in court on Sept. 25.
