A federal appeals court looked at a Wisconsin man’s stash of AI-generated child sexual abuse material, admitted the pictures are now “virtually indistinguishable” from images of real children being abused, and then told the government it could not punish him for keeping them at home.
That is the holding. Not a thought experiment. Not a law-review hypothetical. A published ruling from the Seventh Circuit in United States v. Anderegg.
The Post Millennial reported the decision this week. Fox News, The Daily Wire, and The Federalist all covered the same ugly line the judges said they were powerless to redraw. If no actual child appears in the file, private possession inside the house is treated as First Amendment activity.
Call it “virtual.” Call it “synthetic.” The file still exists to gratify the same appetite that wrecks children.
Steven Anderegg of Holmen, Wisconsin, was charged by the Justice Department in 2024 after an investigation that, according to court coverage, began when Meta flagged an Instagram account sending this kind of material to a minor. Prosecutors alleged he used an AI image generator to produce thousands of photorealistic images of children in sexually explicit situations, then possessed them, produced them, distributed them, and transferred them to a person under 16. A district judge tossed only the possession count. The government appealed. The Seventh Circuit affirmed.