Seventh Circuit Affirms First Amendment Protection for Home Possession of AI-Generated CSAM in United States v. Anderegg
Guardii Analysis
On August 25, 2026, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit unanimously held in United States v. Anderegg that, under existing Supreme Court precedent, the home possession of AI-generated child sexual abuse material not depicting an identifiable real child is protected by the First Amendment, affirming a district court's dismissal of one possession charge against Steven Anderegg, a Wisconsin man who allegedly used Stable Diffusion to produce hundreds of hyperrealistic images of prepubescent children engaged in explicit sexual acts and sent them via Instagram direct message to a minor's account. The ruling, which leaves production, distribution and transfer-to-a-minor charges intact, exposes a widening gap between decades-old Supreme Court decisions and rapidly advancing generative AI technology that can now produce photorealistic imagery indistinguishable from depictions of actual abuse, with the court noting that the image-generation technology available today was likely unimaginable when the relevant precedents were established nearly 25 years ago.
The Anderegg case began when Meta reported the Instagram direct message to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, illustrating the critical role platform-level detection plays even when legal frameworks lag behind technology. Guardii's anti-CSAM detection module, which includes specialized capability for AI-generated and deepfake child sexual abuse material, operates across Instagram, Snapchat, Discord, Roblox and other platforms to identify and block the distribution of such material in real time at the point of contact. By detecting threat patterns in direct-message conversations as they occur and flagging or intercepting the material before it reaches a child, the system enables platforms and authorities to act on production and distribution—the charges that survived constitutional challenge—while surfacing the child at acute risk to the right professional or agency, addressing the operational harm AI-generated CSAM presents regardless of how possession statutes are ultimately resolved by the courts.