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A paedophile who made thousands of pounds by creating child abuse images using AI and real pictures of children has been jailed for 18 years in a landmark case.
Hugh Nelson used a 3D character generator to turn ordinary, non-explicit pictures of children into child abuse images, before selling them on an internet forum used by artists.
People who knew the children in the real world would send the 27-year-old images of them.
Nelson, from Bolton, would then charge his network of paedophiles £80 for a new “character”. After that, it was £10 per image to animate them in different, explicit positions.
Over an 18-month period, Nelson admits he made around £5,000 from selling these images.
In some cases, Nelson then went on to encourage his clients to rape and sexually assault the children, the court heard.
In a police interview, the paedophile told officers: “A lot of my characters were commissioned by their dads, uncles, family friends.”
Jeanette Smith, a specialist prosecutor for the CPS, said: “This is one of the first cases of its kind that demonstrates a link between people like Nelson, who are creating computer-generated images using technology, and the real-life offending that goes on behind that.”
A number of paedophiles have been sent to prison recently for using AI to create child abuse images.
In Nelson’s case, however, police were able to link the images he generated to real children for the first time.
Nelson, who had no previous convictions, was arrested at his family home in Egerton, Bolton, in June last year and told police he had a sexual interest mainly in girls aged about 12.
The children…
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