Federal Appeals Court Rules AI-Generated CSAM Possession Protected in Private
Guardii Analysis
On August 25, 2026, a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled that federal obscenity statute 18 U.S.C. section 1466A is unconstitutional as applied to the private in-home possession of AI-generated child sexual abuse images that do not depict a real child. The case, United States v. Steven Anderegg, arose after Meta reported that the defendant had sent AI-generated images to a minor on Instagram; investigators later found hundreds of similar images on devices taken from his home in Holmen, Wisconsin. Prosecutors alleged that Anderegg used Stable Diffusion and additional software with carefully worded prompts to generate photorealistic images of prepubescent minors. The panel held that Supreme Court precedent from 1969 and 2002 left it no option but to strike down the possession charge, though production, distribution and transmission to a minor remain prosecutable. The circuit-level holding applies to Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin.
Detection of AI-generated child sexual abuse material at the point of transmission addresses the prosecution gap the Seventh Circuit ruling has opened. Where possession within the home is now constitutionally shielded in three states, distribution and sending the material to a minor remain criminal, and those acts occur in digital channels before the content reaches the recipient's device. The anti-CSAM module within the Guardii platform, a world-leading AI online-safety system and Meta Business Partner, identifies both authentic and AI-generated child sexual abuse material in real time as it moves through direct messages on Instagram, Snapchat, Discord, Roblox and other platforms, blocking transmission and flagging the account before the image is delivered to a child. Guardii detects the material in transit rather than retrospectively, enabling platforms and law enforcement to act on distribution and transmission offences that remain prosecutable even after this ruling, and preventing re-victimisation of the child recipient without waiting for a user to self-report or for investigators to secure a warrant for a suspect's home devices.