North Smithfield man accused of creating AI-generated child sexual abuse material

The Rhode Island U.S. Attorney's Office announced the November 2026 federal arrest of Joseph Mello, a 38-year-old former instructor at gymnastics and dance facilities in Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts, on charges including attempted production of child pornography, receipt and possession of child pornography, and production of obscene visual representations of the sexual abuse of children. Court documents allege Mello filmed a minor and used AI nudification prompts including instructions to remove clothing while keeping facial features unchanged, and that he possessed other child sexual abuse materials.

Real-time interception at the point of contact could have prevented this exploitation before any image was manipulated. Guardii's anti-CSAM detection module, operating across Instagram, Snapchat, Discord, Roblox, and other platforms where instructors and students may connect, identifies the distinctive escalation from access to solicitation to image request, flagging the conversation to a parent, facility administrator, or law enforcement the moment the pattern emerges rather than after the abuse has been recorded. The system detects the coercive ask, the boundary violation, and the transfer attempt as behavioral signals, surfacing a child in danger without requiring anyone to view what was said, and enabling immediate escalation to the appropriate authority in an emergency.