{"id":13905,"date":"2025-10-16T10:15:17","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T17:15:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/?p=13905"},"modified":"2025-10-16T10:17:01","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T17:17:01","slug":"uinta-county-man-accused-of-using-ai-to-put-girl-in-child-porn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/2025\/10\/16\/uinta-county-man-accused-of-using-ai-to-put-girl-in-child-porn\/","title":{"rendered":"Uinta County Man Accused Of Using AI To Put Girl In Child Porn"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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It used to be in decades past that the government when it needed to get rid of a problem would just place them in a mental institution after a corrupt, coerced doctor’s diagnoses. The better method today is to grab them up, claim or place child porn on a device, and then send them off to prison labeled a pedophile, where their friends abandon them, reputation destroyed, and they become a target for other inmates, probably remaining quiet to not lose protective custody and end up like the Lost Prophets front man recently murdered behind bars. Furthermore, how easy will it be for an AI agent to place this type of material on your device and then report you? And does virtual child porn rise to the same level as actual child porn with real victims? Consequently, if someone put my likeness on a porn actor, it wouldn’t really be me, and easy to explain away as a deepfake, so was there really harm that should result in imprisonment? Or is it just a civil matter? So it seems to me this is more of a setup for getting rid of problems than really addressing justice for crimes involving real victims. Interestingly, an African firm was contracted to add actual CSAM material to ChatGPT<\/a> so it could filter out such material and requests, but it probably also has it stored where it could be used, placed on people’s computers, so an easier way of getting rid of government problems has probably never existed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/cowboystatedaily.com\/2025\/10\/15\/uinta-county-man-accused-of-using-ai-to-put-girl-in-child-porn\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n

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A Uinta County man accused of using AI to transform a teen\u2019s photo into child pornography faces four felony charges. The case has reignited some Wyoming lawmakers\u2019 push to curb “deepfake” deceptions and bolster AI-related law.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

By Clair McFarland<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
A Uinta County man accused of using AI to transform a teen\u2019s photo into child pornography faces four felony charges. The case has reignited some Wyoming lawmakers\u2019 push to curb “deepfake” deceptions and bolster AI-related law. (CSD File)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The case of a Uinta County man accused of using an artificial intelligence application to remake a photo of a teenage girl he knows into child pornography resurrects some lawmakers\u2019 concerns about AI deception.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The case of Matthew John McDowell, who turns 47 this year, rose Tuesday to the felony-level Uinta County District Court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

McDowell faces four counts of child pornography possession \u2014 each charged as a \u201csubsequent offense\u201d to prior child sexual exploitation and each punishable by between seven and 12 years in prison and up to $10,000 in fines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of the four photographs underpinning the four counts, at least one is a deepfake, court documents say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The original, unaltered photograph was of a teen girl McDowell knows, fully wrapped in a towel from her upper chest to her feet, with her hair wet as though she had just gotten out of the shower, says an evidentiary affidavit by Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation Special Agent Daniel Allison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The altered version showed her naked and bore the words \u201cAI generated\u201d in its center, with the application\u2019s name in the upper left corner of the image, wrote Allison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The affidavit describes the other three photos underpinning the charges as child pornography involving a prepubescent girl depicted in lone sex acts and a sex act with an adult male. The document does not assert that these are deepfakes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, seemingly as an aside, it says investigators found \u201cat least nine files of computer-generated imagery or animation\u201d produced from original photos of a teen girl McDowell knows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Allison\u2019s account says investigators found deepfake-generating applications on one of McDowell\u2019s devices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of these applications touts its ability to \u201cswap faces in adult videos using cutting-edge AI technology \u2026 achieving a flawless, lifelike effect,\u201d says the document.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jon Gerard, McDowell\u2019s attorney, declined Wednesday to comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe Time For A Second Look<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Wyoming has not passed a standalone law banning deepfake fraud, though some lawmakers tried without success to run that kind of legislation in 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rep. Mike Yin, D-Jackson, had voted in favor of the deepfake fraud bill when the Select Committee on Blockchain, Financial Technology and Digital Innovation advanced it in the 2023 interim, he told Cowboy State Daily in a Wednesday interview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That bill didn\u2019t focus on child pornography or deepfake porn. It sought to target AI image fraud generally, by making people flag deceptive-yet-realistic images that had been altered. The bill\u2019s enforcement mechanism was a private lawsuit avenue, for anyone misled by deceptive AI images.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It also sought to authorize criminal prosecution of people caught using deepfakes to sway elections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On hearing of McDowell\u2019s case, Yin said it might be time to review the issue again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ll be a little crude here, but it\u2019s f***ed up that people do this sort of thing,\u201d said Yin of the allegations. \u201cAnd I mean, maybe we should continue to figure out whether we should have an additional offense for this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yin said he\u2019s glad justice is being sought in this case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rep. Rachel Rodriguez-Williams, R-Cody, confirmed late Wednesday that she\u2019s co-sponsoring a bill by Rep. Jaymie Lien, R-Casper, to address this issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe AI Innovation and Child Protection act (would give Wyoming) the tools to lead with both innovation and integrity,\u201d wrote Rodriguez-Williams in a Wednesday text message, adding that the bill seeks to safeguard people and ensure Wyoming retains a competitive edge in the AI market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The text of the bill was not available by press time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DCI Says It\u2019s Doing The Thing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

DCI is \u201cwell aware of the capabilities Artificial Intelligence offers in the generation of Child Sexual Abuse Material and will investigate those cases in a similar fashion as traditional CSAM cases,\u201d DCI Commander Ryan Cox wrote in a Wednesday email to Cowboy State Daily, which he said was the product of his conversation with ICAC Commander Ryan Hieb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AI gives new ways to make computer-generated images that in the past may have used cut-and-paste tools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRegardless of the production method, DCI will apply the full scope of our investigative resources to these cases,\u201d added Cox.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Allison\u2019s affidavit makes a similar statement, pointing to Wyoming\u2019s child-porn ban and its inclusion of \u201ccomputer-generated\u201d and \u201cmodified\u201d imagery in its definition of the illegal material.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s unclear whether the U.S. Supreme Court would agree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The high court addressed this issue before the AI era, in the 2002 case Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition. The court struck down as unconstitutional a federal ban on \u201cvirtual child pornography.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe argument that virtual child pornography whets pedophiles’ appetites and encourages them to engage in illegal conduct is unavailing because the mere tendency of speech to encourage unlawful acts is not a sufficient reason for banning it,\u201d says the case syllabus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, noted Blockchain Committee Co-Chair Sen. Chris Rothfuss, D-Laramie, the Uinta County case isn\u2019t a perfect parallel to Ashcroft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s because the victims of fraudulent deepfake pornography aren\u2019t necessarily sex abuse victims, but they still suffer harm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ashcroft\u2019s \u201cvirtual\u201d images, conversely, weren\u2019t realistic morphs of real people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lawmakers may need to discover what the harm to real people is and how to curb it without violating the First Amendment, Rothfuss said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rothfuss had championed the rejected deepfake bill, for which the legislature lacked an \u201cappetite,\u201d he said. That bill sought chiefly to curb deceptions that could sway an election.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps the legislature will remain \u201cagainst being proactive\u201d and not legislate in this space until AI image technology wreaks real, noticeable harms in Wyoming, he opined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Go Carefully<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The libertarian-leaning Blockchain Committee Co-Chair Rep. Daniel Singh, R-Cheyenne, had voted against the deepfake bill \u2013 not because of any pornography nexus but because he felt that its provision criminalizing some unflagged political speech went too far.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though the bill sought to target outright deceptive images, Singh worried that it could be weaponized against satire or parody, which are protected under the First Amendment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, said Singh, the deepfake issue and the broader problems of people using others\u2019 likenesses and data deserve thoughtful contemplation going forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSome of the factors you have to think about with AI-generated porn include your right to your own likeness,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd that was a topic that I wanted to explore \u2013 and that we\u2019re probably going to explore in the upcoming interim.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Singh wants to do so in a way that protects children and preserves the right of free expression, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He also said the deepfake issue is a reminder that data miners are compiling not just images, but location, behavior, communication and other data people feed into their phones and the internet, said Singh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether parents want to avoid posting photos of their children online falls under their own discretion, he said, but data harvesting is \u201csomething to be aware of.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“People do need to be cautious of what they look at on the internet and the type of interactions they have with the interface itself, because everything is being recorded,” he said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It used to be in decades past that the government when it needed to get rid of a problem would just place them in a mental institution after a corrupt, coerced doctor’s diagnoses. The better method today is to grab them up, claim or place child porn on a device, and then send them off […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech","category-wyoming"],"blocksy_meta":[],"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Jason","author_link":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/author\/jturning\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13905"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13905\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13907,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13905\/revisions\/13907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}