Speaker 1: Don't want to be an American. Thursday Maritis short day.
Speaker 1: We've got reds baseball here on seven hundred wlwas eleven
Speaker 1: o'clock to get inside pitch and try and take three
Speaker 1: or four from the Marlins for getting back home. That's
Speaker 1: the fun part. This is the sickening part for you
Speaker 1: of the news cycle. So this guy in Ohio man
Speaker 1: just became the first person in America to be convicted
Speaker 1: of our new federal AI deep fake porn law. But
Speaker 1: Ohio itself has no law concerning AI child pornography. That's
Speaker 1: not a state crime. So how's that possible in light
Speaker 1: of this case? And by the way, we have not one,
Speaker 1: but two brand new cases involving deep fake AI porn
Speaker 1: for underage people in both Evandelle and Mason. Joining the
Speaker 1: show from Ohioans for Child Protection is Rebecca Scherendorf. Good morning, Rebecca,
Speaker 1: how you.
Speaker 2: Been oh doing good? Thanks for drawing attention to that.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm not drawing attention to it. I think the
Speaker 1: news cycle is because we've had three big cases this week.
Speaker 1: I mentioned we'll get We'll get to the charges against
Speaker 1: this guy from Hilliard, Ohio. James Strellier is his Estraller
Speaker 1: is his name from up in Columbus, and it's pretty
Speaker 1: disturbing when you look at the details of the case him.
Speaker 1: But we have a seven year old Mason who's in
Speaker 1: a Warren County Juvenile court fifty plus family charges for
Speaker 1: pandering sexual ordered material involving a minor a two year
Speaker 1: about a year long investigation. I should say it involves
Speaker 1: AI generated explicit images where in this case a girl's
Speaker 1: face was put on a fake body to make her
Speaker 1: look naked and rain Phoenix Brown out of Evandale in
Speaker 1: Hamlin County's twenty four year old three charges of pandering
Speaker 1: involving a minor, pandering sexual oriented material, involving a minor,
Speaker 1: in illegal use of minor, and nudity ordered material. Same
Speaker 1: thing here and I mentioned the big case is James
Speaker 1: darld of the second from Columbus installed twenty four over
Speaker 1: twenty four AI platforms and over one hundred web based
Speaker 1: AI models on his phone and use that to harass
Speaker 1: at least six adult women for a period of about
Speaker 1: a year or two and created porn depicting victim and
Speaker 1: sex acts with her own father and then distributed to
Speaker 1: her co workers. And they found literally hundreds of images
Speaker 1: in another thousand or so a couple thousand on his phone,
Speaker 1: and he is the first person in the US CONVICTI
Speaker 1: or to take it down. Act. I know, that's a
Speaker 1: lot to throw at you this morning, but we have
Speaker 1: two local stories, god knows how many more, and of
Speaker 1: course this case here in Ohio of James Stroller. The
Speaker 1: second forty five states have laws criminalizing AI generator computed
Speaker 1: editor edited. It's called ce SAM is what they what
Speaker 1: it's called. And maybe you can explain that terminology and
Speaker 1: kind of set it up for us here before we
Speaker 1: get to talking about what's really going on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there's a few things. First of all, Ohio,
Speaker 2: we do have the child pornography in statute, and the
Speaker 2: nation's been shifting to child sex abuse material. That's the
Speaker 2: sea SAM term, and that's just to recenter the fact
Speaker 2: that a child is abused when there is pornography made
Speaker 2: of a child, and that this is part of the
Speaker 2: abuse and the revictimization. So just as people hear this
Speaker 2: and see it in the news and whatnot, it doesn't
Speaker 2: quite align with our terminology here in Ohio, but for
Speaker 2: the nations shifting that way because this is not a
Speaker 2: victimalist crime by any stretch of the imagination. And while
Speaker 2: those are three high profile cases happening both in our community,
Speaker 2: within our state and whatnot, I think this is just
Speaker 2: a drop in the bucket. Basically, studies are indicating the
Speaker 2: child online exploitations is currently sitting in about one in
Speaker 2: six kids are being exploited online. That can take many forms,
Speaker 2: such as being sex storted into producing sexual images of themselves.
Speaker 2: They can be getting paid to produce material, which sadly,
Speaker 2: children that are read are all the higher targets for
Speaker 2: this kind of exploitation, and once there are images of
Speaker 2: them generated, this in turn could lead to escalating behavior
Speaker 2: like I've heard of pathways where a child was first
Speaker 2: just paid to take a picture of their feet and
Speaker 2: share it, which would seem very harmless to a child
Speaker 2: to share a picture of their feet right, and before
Speaker 2: you know it is escalated into having to conduct violent
Speaker 2: set backs against the peer and record it and share
Speaker 2: it with the offender. And this is another layer in
Speaker 2: it is that the online exploitation can then spread into
Speaker 2: the minor exploiting their peers and those around them getting
Speaker 2: exploited as well. And although high ones for child protection.
Speaker 2: We're concerned that our Statehouse is not keeping pace. We
Speaker 2: have lawmakers like Senator Blessing and Senator Johnson, which has
Speaker 2: introduced SB one sixty three to address a C stamps
Speaker 2: in our state. But there's probably another dozen plus bills
Speaker 2: that need to be passed in Columbus right now, and
Speaker 2: then we need a broad look at our policies and
Speaker 2: ask ourselves is this really keeping case? Because the CDC
Speaker 2: is estimating that about one in four girls are being
Speaker 2: sexually abused by Aug. Eighteen, and the boys fall somewhere
Speaker 2: between the one in six to one in ten mark
Speaker 2: most likely closer to one in six if you consider
Speaker 2: the harm from online exploitation, which can be very real.
Speaker 2: I mean we see these committee suicide.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think we had a case in I want
Speaker 1: to say in Lawrenceburg, maybe not too long ago. Same
Speaker 1: thing happened there. There was an exploitation thing. And the
Speaker 1: sick part about it is you look at this James Stralo,
Speaker 1: the second first guy convicted thirty seven years old. The
Speaker 1: charges by the way, cyberstalking, producing Obstein, visual representations of
Speaker 1: child sexual abuse, and publication of digital forgeries. He had
Speaker 1: all these AI platforms installed on his phone and created
Speaker 1: porn depicting a victim and sex act with her own father,
Speaker 1: and then sent it to her co workers. And of
Speaker 1: course it was just you know, her face, but it
Speaker 1: was AI generated on top of a naked body. Image
Speaker 1: of a naked body. And he posted AI generated images
Speaker 1: of children using faces of boys from his community. And
Speaker 1: they found seven over seven hundred images on a child
Speaker 1: sexually bust website, another twenty four hundred roughly on his phone.
Speaker 1: So this is the first person US convicted under the
Speaker 1: Take It Down Act. So talk about the dispairity, walk
Speaker 1: the listeners through with the gap in Ohio versus the
Speaker 1: federal law right now.
Speaker 2: So right now, SB one sixty three does a few
Speaker 2: things that we don't have in federal law. First of all,
Speaker 2: one of the sections requires a watermark on AI generated
Speaker 2: material that indicates that it is AI generated. I think
Speaker 2: this could be useful because if the technology companies have
Speaker 2: to provide the water mark and it's there, at least
Speaker 2: if you have an afarious factor using the tool incorrectly
Speaker 2: and illegally, there is that chance at least that the
Speaker 2: watermark is still going to stay on it as long
Speaker 2: as they don't remove it, which is a separate crime
Speaker 2: than removing of the water mark. And so this will
Speaker 2: actually be protecting people on multiple levels because if you
Speaker 2: think of the Columbus area case, I mean we have
Speaker 2: adult women, adult men because that father is just as
Speaker 2: much a victim in this, and we also even have
Speaker 2: young boys that were targeted by this man. So we
Speaker 2: have a wide range of people that are being targeted
Speaker 2: with this AI pornography and also the deep fakes, because
Speaker 2: there are other things beyond sexual exploitation that could still
Speaker 2: be very problematic to be detecting people doing and can
Speaker 2: result in loss of jobs. There have been cases where
Speaker 2: AI has been used to have someone say some really
Speaker 2: offensive things in which their job was on the line.
Speaker 2: I believe it was a school principle that was targeted
Speaker 2: in a case that was highlighted by Attorney General Gates
Speaker 2: in his committee testimony on SBS one sixty three, and
Speaker 2: then also our bill, the bill that Center of Blessing
Speaker 2: Johnson brought. It is a civil course of action to victims,
Speaker 2: and I think it is so very important that first
Speaker 2: of all, victims should have access to civil court. They're
Speaker 2: there for a reason. It is a valid part of
Speaker 2: our justice system, but also it creates an incentive for
Speaker 2: the tech companies and for the individuals not to engage
Speaker 2: in that that they too can face three percussions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wonder, I wonder how. I wonder how Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wonder how hard it is for them to stop creating?
Speaker 1: You know, it's I would no one listening right now
Speaker 1: other than maybe one person possibly understand how AI works, right,
Speaker 1: and how you're able to simply turn that that that
Speaker 1: element off. By the way, So Rebecca Scherndorf, she's on
Speaker 1: the show with a Highlands for child protection. She was
Speaker 1: critical during the clergy abuse cases, and now we're talking
Speaker 1: about something called Sea SAM. It's called child sexual abuse material.
Speaker 1: You heard the name James strall of the second of Columbus,
Speaker 1: just a horrific criminal here involving AI generated images used
Speaker 1: on women and some children. And now two cases one
Speaker 1: in Mason one and Evendale. Uh, where you have younger
Speaker 1: people that are using AI to generate naked images of
Speaker 1: people or they take their face and their likeness and
Speaker 1: put it on essentially an AI generated nude body and
Speaker 1: then disseminating it to other students. In the case of Straller,
Speaker 1: he was doing it with women that that he knew
Speaker 1: and was doing in the workplace. Different story, But on
Speaker 1: those two things, amazing case I said involves this, believe
Speaker 1: seventeen year old, I said, facing fifty plus collomny charges.
Speaker 1: The court didn't mention AI specifically there, and that's an
Speaker 1: element of it. And the stroller case is children and women.
Speaker 1: So when you look at it, is AI generated se SAM,
Speaker 1: which by the way, is child sexual abuse material that
Speaker 1: term a lot se SAM. It's crossing all demographic lines
Speaker 1: right now. And does the law dictate that it's specifically
Speaker 1: about children or its include adults for everyone.
Speaker 2: This actually is offering protection to everyone, and it goes
Speaker 2: a step further to also protect you from someone feeling
Speaker 2: your identity using.
Speaker 1: AI gotcha, which which is.
Speaker 2: The impact seniors and financial crimes. So I think the
Speaker 2: senators try to make a well rounded bill here and
Speaker 2: it should sit in state law as well. We shouldn't
Speaker 2: leave room for criminals to be able to exploit people
Speaker 2: in our state because we don't have as robusts of
Speaker 2: laws as the other forty five states in the country.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is an interesting angle from me. I guess
Speaker 1: the First Amendment standpoint because this is going to be
Speaker 1: things like this are going to be challenged, and that's
Speaker 1: the way the law works. You know, you don't have
Speaker 1: to agree with going, well, we should be protecting children
Speaker 1: and innocent people from this nonsense. However, the Constitution talks
Speaker 1: about First Amendment. What dictates in the first Amendment. So
Speaker 1: I'm looking at case right now out of Sturgis and
Speaker 1: this guy, I think Sturgis, Wisconsin. I want to say
Speaker 1: that the age there is upholding a federal or a
Speaker 1: statute to state statute that band's possession of child sex
Speaker 1: dolls and computer generated sexual material and includes identifiable features,
Speaker 1: and so the sex doll that looks like a child,
Speaker 1: it's kind of disturbing. They want to continue to enforce that.
Speaker 1: There are critics out there that argue purely AI generated images,
Speaker 1: ones that don't use a real child's face, unlike the
Speaker 1: ones we're talking about here, are victimless and protected expression.
Speaker 1: What's your response to that argument, we're talking about AI
Speaker 1: generate image is not of real people in their face,
Speaker 1: but rather just AI generated bodies, naked bodies and in
Speaker 1: this case of children. What do you make of that?
Speaker 2: Well, I think if we look at this in the
Speaker 2: larger contexts that rain estimates that sexual violent crimes, the
Speaker 2: actual individuals only have about a two percent conviction ery,
Speaker 2: and part of the problem is the delayed disclosure which
Speaker 2: Ohio has an old statute limitations while in the book
Speaker 2: that isn't updated to reflect the rest of the country
Speaker 2: on this. But take that load conviction ery and then
Speaker 2: look at what other states have done. They have found
Speaker 2: that individuals that buy these child sextuals are actually most
Speaker 2: likely offenders. And it's a much easier case to make
Speaker 2: that you have purchased something like this which is clearly
Speaker 2: for use for sexualizing a child and also can be
Speaker 2: used in a grooming process if you think about it,
Speaker 2: but it is most certainly not a normal purchest and
Speaker 2: is its own red flag behavior, And so some states
Speaker 2: have gone the route of criminalizing those kinds of devices,
Speaker 2: such as child sex fells, in order to identify more
Speaker 2: child exploiters. As a free speech we have a long
Speaker 2: history of regulating things that you say and material that
Speaker 2: you can produce when it causes harm to others. And
Speaker 2: when you have tens of millions of images that do
Speaker 2: not depict an actual person but is still sexualizing children,
Speaker 2: you are moving a certain group of people along a
Speaker 2: tangent of exploitative thoughts about minors, and they may start
Speaker 2: acting on them. An example of this, as there has
Speaker 2: been an uptick in strangulation content in regular pornograph, there
Speaker 2: has been a corresponding uptick of strangulation on our college campuses. Now,
Speaker 2: strangulation is a felony, and you can survive a strangulation
Speaker 2: and still die later because this is actually cutting off
Speaker 2: the blood to your brain and you're strangled. This is
Speaker 2: more involved than like holding your breath, right, this is
Speaker 2: just oxygen that we're talking about, and a person that's
Speaker 2: been strangled is actually at risk of strokes even six
Speaker 2: months later posts surviving the strangulation. But you have young
Speaker 2: people that see this material and it's been normalized as
Speaker 2: a kink, even though it is deeply harmful and a pelony, right,
Speaker 2: And I think that's just an example of where you
Speaker 2: see a performance of something that's harmful sexually seeping out
Speaker 2: into the real world and harming real people.
Speaker 1: It's going to be an interesting challenge because, as you
Speaker 1: said that, I don't disagree with you because it's horrific
Speaker 1: what we're talking about here, Rebecca, But he said you know,
Speaker 1: they watch AI generated images which aren't real things. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like it's like a cartoon. Essentially, it looks a
Speaker 1: real life, but it's it's not real in real life,
Speaker 1: if that makes sense, And they might act on that,
Speaker 1: see that, and that's a slippery slope, I think from
Speaker 1: a constitutional perspective, and I think you'd agree with me.
Speaker 1: Is like, Okay, well I have a gun and I
Speaker 1: might shoot someone and commit a homicide. I may, I
Speaker 1: may not. That's a slippery slope right there that they
Speaker 1: you know under the law, I guess under don't. I
Speaker 1: know IF's habeous corpus or not. But essentially it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: in this case, when we're talking about real people, there
Speaker 1: are real victims there, whereas with AI generated image there
Speaker 1: is no victim.
Speaker 2: Well, and I think this is going to depend on
Speaker 2: the details. And this is why we import and judges,
Speaker 2: because our lawmakers put the words on paper, and then
Speaker 2: our prosecutors have discretions from there, and then we still
Speaker 2: have our grand jury in place even before charges are brought,
Speaker 2: and then it goes before a judge and a jury, right,
Speaker 2: and those processes are in place. Actually, they add a
Speaker 2: whole other layer to our law. There's what's written in statute,
Speaker 2: and then there's the case law that occurs after the
Speaker 2: writing of a statute, and so you can have aspects
Speaker 2: of it that are tossed out when there are valid
Speaker 2: concerns regarding free speech. But at the same time, it's
Speaker 2: soll legal for you and i's goes, you know, to
Speaker 2: the stereotypical theater and shoutfire, and we may get into
Speaker 2: a situation where someone claims, well, that wasn't actually this individual,
Speaker 2: but they altered their image just enough, right, sure, because
Speaker 2: there's also problems with real child sex abuse material then
Speaker 2: being altered by AI to make it look safe in
Speaker 2: order to claim then that it's okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think people like the Straller guys should be
Speaker 1: buried underneath the jail quite honestly, and anyone doing this
Speaker 1: stuff to exploit people it's criminal. But we do have
Speaker 1: to watch the constitution constitutionalia. But I think we're all
Speaker 1: rooting for these people to go to prison or worse.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, I understand the perils of
Speaker 1: enacting a law that says, hey, anything AI generated is
Speaker 1: is you know, if it's child porn, it's no go.
Speaker 1: It's It's going to be an interesting conversation that's going
Speaker 1: to develop, for sure, but I appreciate what you do.
Speaker 1: Rebecca Scherndorf for ohioshines for child Protection as Ohio now
Speaker 1: tries to get their laws up to speed here to
Speaker 1: match the federal on we have a man in Columbus,
Speaker 1: first one prosecuted under this new law federally. The DOJ
Speaker 1: believes first person in the United States convict him to
Speaker 1: the Take It Down Act is James Stroller out of Columbus, Ohio,
Speaker 1: and just absolutely horrific things that he did to women
Speaker 1: and involving AI and deep fake porn. Rebecca, all the best,
Speaker 1: Thanks for jumping on this morning. Love it all right,
Speaker 1: Yes maam you too. We got to get a news
Speaker 1: update in run a little bit late here on this
Speaker 1: Thursday morning. We have Reds Baseball coming up and hopefully
Speaker 1: how about three out of four in Miami that would
Speaker 1: be awesome before they head back here against the Angels.
Speaker 1: We'll have it for you today inside Pitch at eleven
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