Hugh Nelson, 27, from Bolton, jailed after transforming normal pictures of children into sexual abuse imagery
A man who used AI to create child abuse images using photographs of real children has been sentenced to 18 years in prison.
In the first prosecution of its kind in the UK, Hugh Nelson, 27, from Bolton, was convicted of 16 child sexual abuse offences in August, after an investigation by Greater Manchester police (GMP).
Nelson had used Daz 3D, a computer programme with an AI function, to transform “normal” images of children into sexual abuse imagery, Greater Manchester police said. In some cases, paedophiles had commissioned the images, supplying photographs of children with whom they had contact in real life.
He was also found guilty of encouraging other offenders to commit rape.
I’ve been saying that for ages. Obviously we don’t want to enable any pedophiles to do anything horrific to children, but we’re at a state right now where if you have those urges to begin with, you’re basically already told to accept that you’re an incurable monster. So why not act on the urges?
Somehow we need to get through to such people that they need to get help before they do anything terrible. I’m not sure how to do that in the current climate though.