US News: Child Disney star left in tears after criminal creates sex abuse images using AI

August 5, 2024 TruthUSA

A Disney Channel child star has revealed to Sky News that she was emotionally devastated upon discovering that a criminal had utilized artificial intelligence (AI) to produce sexual abuse images using her face.

Kaylin Hayman, at 16 years old, received a shocking phone call from the FBI after returning home from school one day. An investigator informed her that a man residing thousands of miles away had used her likeness in explicit images without her consent.

The investigator explained that Kaylin’s face had been digitally imposed on images of adults engaging in sexual activities.

“When I heard about it, I was overcome with tears,” Kaylin shared. “It feels like a severe violation of my privacy. It’s hard to believe that someone I don’t even know could view me in such a degrading manner.”

Kaylin had been a prominent actress on the Disney Channel series, Just Roll With It, and was subjected to exploitation alongside other child actors.

“My innocence was shattered in that moment,” she expressed. “In those images, I was depicted as a 12-year-old girl, which was heart-wrenching. I felt incredibly isolated because I wasn’t aware that such a crime was occurring in the world.”

Unfortunately, Kaylin’s story is not unique. According to data from the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) in the US, there were 4,700 reports of AI-generated images depicting the sexual exploitation of children last year.

The realism of AI-generated child sexual abuse images has reached a point where law enforcement officials must spend significant, distressing time differentiating between computer-generated content and images containing actual victims.

Terry Dobrosky, a cyber crimes specialist in Ventura County, California, is one such investigator tasked with this duty.

“The material being created by AI is incredibly lifelike now, to a disturbing extent,” he remarked. “An individual might argue in court that they believed the images were AI-generated and not of real children, attempting to evade guilt. This poses a serious threat to our existing laws, which is deeply concerning.”

Sky News was granted rare access to the nerve centre of the cyber crimes investigations team in Ventura County.

Dobrosky, a District Attorney investigator, exhibited some of the dark web message boards he monitors.

“This individual here,” he pointed at the screen, “is known as ‘love tiny girls’… and he is mentioning the increasing quality of AI. Another person remarked on how AI has supported his addiction, not by overcoming it but by exacerbating it.”

The use of AI to create and distribute sexual images is not limited to the dark web. Instances have emerged of students in schools taking photos of their classmates from social media and using AI to place them on explicit images.

At a Beverly Hills school in Los Angeles, five 13 and 14-year-olds engaged in this behavior, resulting in their expulsion and a police investigation.

However, in states like California, it is not yet considered a crime to utilize AI for generating child sexual abuse images.

Rikole Kelly, deputy district attorney for Ventura County, is striving to address this by proposing a new law.

“This technology is so easily accessible that even middle schoolers [ages 10 to 14] can utilize it to traumatize their peers,” she emphasized. “This accessibility, when in the wrong hands, can cause irreversible harm.”

“We must not become desensitized to the sexual abuse of children,” she concluded. “Using this technology in such a manner has the potential to achieve exactly that.”

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