A Canadian man who created synthesized child pornography using deepfake neural network technology has been sentenced to eight years in prison, CBC reports .
Stephen LaRouche, 61, has been accused of creating at least seven pornographic videos in which the faces of the actors were replaced with children's faces using said technology. He also admitted to possessing hundreds of thousands of child pornography files, which affected the judge's decision as an aggravating circumstance.
LaRouche's defense petitioned for a reduced prison sentence, citing that no children were harmed in the process of making the generated videos. Judge Benoît Gagnon disagreed with this argument, noting that LaRouche violated the sexual integrity of the children whose faces he used. This is the first verdict of its kind in Canada in a neural network-generated pornography case.
Earlier in April, a bill was introduced in the California State Assembly (USA) to prohibit the creation of synthetic pornographic content that exploits the likeness of a real person without his consent.