2024-10-30
26 分钟The Guardian’s North of England correspondent Hannah Al-Othman recounts the case of Hugh Nelson, sentenced to 18 years in prison this week for creating child abuse images with AI. Prof Clare McGlynn charts the rise of this material on the web and discusses what can be done to stop it. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/infocus
This is the Guardian.
Today.
Beyond Deep how AI is being used by paedophiles online.
A warning before we start.
Today's episode discusses child abuse and contains explicit language.
There's this program which is what I've used to create these images.
This is the voice of a 27 year old man called Hugh Nelson.
I've probably been doing it for about two years now and I could probably say that they've got worse in nature as I've continued with them.
Nelson is being interviewed by officers from Greater Manchester Police.
It's sick how much it affects your mind, especially when you have no job, you sit at home, you play games, you watch porn and you make stupid goddamn images.
These goddamn images were of children.
They can just be images of them posing fully clothed to hardcore rape images.
So everything really.
It's been a crime to make indecent images of children for decades.
But what made Nelson's crime novel was that the children in his images were AI generated.
He used normal photographs of real children and transformed them into hyper realistic bespoke so called characters which he could manipulate to order.
He knew what he was doing was wrong.
I am sexually attracted to some kids but I've been completely swept up in it.
My mind is very corrupted and warped.
On Monday, Nelson was sentenced to 18 years in prison after pleading guilty to 16 child abuse charges.