A Florida man is facing 20 counts of obscenity for allegedly creating and distributing AI-generated child pornography.

A Florida man is facing 20 counts of obscenity for allegedly creating and distributing AI-generated child pornography, highlighting the danger and ubiquity of generative AI being used for nefarious reasons.

Phillip Michael McCorkle was arrested last week while he was working at a movie theater in Vero Beach, Florida, according to TV station CBS 12 News. A crew from the TV station captured the arrest, which made for dramatic video footage due to law enforcement leading away the uniform-wearing McCorkle from the theater in handcuffs.

  • HonorableScythe@lemm.ee
    121·
    2 months ago

    Dan Savage coined the term “gold star pedophile” in a column years ago, referring to people who acknowledge their attraction to children but never act on it by harming a child or accessing CSAM. I do feel bad for these people because there are no resources to help them. The only way they can access actual therapeutic resources for their condition is by offending and going to jail. If the pedophile goes to a therapist and confesses attraction to children, therapists are mandated reporters and will assume they’re going to act on it. An article I read a few years back interviewed members of an online community of non-offending pedophiles who essentially made their own support group since no one else will help them, and nearly all research on them is from a forensic (criminal) context.

    There’s a pretty good article by James Cantor talking about dealing with pedophiles in a therapeutic context here.

    Don’t get me wrong - I think offenders need to be punished for what they do. I unfortunately have a former best friend who has offended. He’s no longer in my life and never will be again. But I think we could prevent offenders from reaching that point and hurting someone if we did more research and found ways to stop them before it happened.

    • Liz@midwest.socialEnglish
      113·
      2 months ago

      We really gotta flip the standard and make therapist sessions 100% confidential. We should encouraging people to seek help in stopping their bad behavior, no matter what it is, and they’re less likely to do that if they think a therapist could report them.

      • LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.worldEnglish
        52·
        2 months ago

        You’re asking therapists to live with that information. It’s not so easy to hear that a child is being actively raped and not legally being allowed to report it.

        We already lose tons of social workers in CPS because they can’t help those kids much or save them. Most normal adults can’t really mentally handle child torture without doing something about it. How many unreported child abuse cases before a therapist kills themselves?

        Let alone that you’re sentencing a child to live in a rape nightmare, something most adults can’t tolerate, all so their abuser can get some help maybe. Wonder how many kids will kill themselves. What the actual fuck. Here’s a hint: kids are slaves, so passing laws that disempower them even more is really fucked up.

        • Liz@midwest.socialEnglish
          2·
          2 months ago

          I mean, how many children get abused because people are too afraid to seek help? It’s not an area with an easy answer, and I don’t have hard numbers on how much harm either scenario would produce.