A sex offender convicted of making more than 1,000 indecent images of children has been banned from using any “AI creating tools” for the next five years in the first known case of its kind.
Anthony Dover, 48, was ordered by a UK court “not to use, visit or access” artificial intelligence generation tools without the prior permission of police as a condition of a sexual harm prevention order imposed in February.
The ban prohibits him from using tools such as text-to-image generators, which can make lifelike pictures based on a written command, and “nudifying” websites used to make explicit “deepfakes”.
Dover, who was given a community order and £200 fine, has also been explicitly ordered not to use Stable Diffusion software, which has reportedly been exploited by paedophiles to create hyper-realistic child sexual abuse material, according to records from a sentencing hearing at Poole magistrates court.
I am not aware of the research in this area although I have a minor psych background so that’s interesting and makes sense in hindsight. My understanding is that a large part of the compulsion is driven by guilt, shame, feelings of worthlessness, prior victimizations of themselves, etc. Essentially trying to gain a sense of power by taking it from those more vulnerable than them, like an abuser beating their spouse because someone at work put them down. So it makes sense to encourage a sense of power and lessen any sense of guilt and shame.
On a side note, I can’t imagine having their name plastered everywhere does anything but trigger the compulsion to re-offend. Maybe when we advance more as a society, we can separate individuals into categories of has-offended and child-attracted, with the former being on a public danger list and the latter having frequent discreet visits by social workers and mandatory counselors, etc. To lessen the chance of offense and possibly start helping them before they get to the offense stage (those that were ever going to offend.)