Japan Court Recognizes AI-Created Naked Girl Images as Child Porn

Nagoya, June 5 (Jiji Press)–A Japanese court has sentenced a former elementary school teacher to three years and six months in prison for possessing naked images of girls created by generative artificial intelligence, among other acts, in violation of the law against child prostitution and pornography. The sentence issued by Nagoya District Court to Shota Suito, 35, on Thursday marked the first case in Japan in which the law has been applied to the possession of AI-generated sexual deepfakes. Public prosecutors had demanded a six-year prison sentence for Suito. Suito, a former teacher at a municipal school in Nagoya, the capital of Aichi Prefecture, central Japan, was a member of a group of seven elementary and junior high school teachers who are believed to have shared secretly filmed images of girls on social media. Takaaki Matsumoto, a judge at the court, recognized that the naked images of girls possessed by Suito were created on an AI-using image-editing website based on photos of students that were sent to another member of the group. Pointing out that the faces and poses of the girls in the images in question are identical with those in the original photos, the judge said that they are elaborate enough to make people mistakenly believe that the girls were photographed naked. According to the ruling, Suito, between May 2023 and March 2025, poured body fluids on girls’ recorders and school lunches, and shared secretly filmed videos of three girls changing clothes at his elementary school with other members of the group on a group chat. He also possessed AI-generated sexual images of two girls, the ruling said. Over a series of cases involving the teachers’ group, seven people from five prefectures were arrested and indicted. Five of them, including Suito, have received guilty rulings. The number of affected children has reached 135 or more, according to the Aichi prefectural police department. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]