New Jersey authorities on Thursday accused a deputy attorney general in the state's top law enforcement office of using artificial intelligence to turn social media photos of real minors into sexualized images and distributing them online. Fitzgerald, 51, faces charges of possession of child sexual abuse material, dissemination of photos or film of CSAM, and criminal use of a communication facility, according to detectives.
A search conducted Thursday turned up prompts and scripts used to create artificially generated child sexual abuse material with an AI program, a press release said. Investigators also found Discord chat logs in which Fitzgerald, using the username "thegentlemanpervert_2160_07833," allegedly admitted to making multiple illicit images with artificial intelligence and sharing them with other users, according to the release.
Fitzgerald's LinkedIn profile shows he has been a deputy attorney general since 2016, preparing insurance fraud and insurance licensee cases for trial as a state prosecutor. His case is a rare instance of an official employed by a state's top law enforcement and legal office being accused of making and distributing AI CSAM, though police officers have been arrested for the crime. Earlier this year, a Pennsylvania cop was arrested for making AI porn from photos on driver's licenses, and The Korea Times reported that a police officer in Korea was more recently arrested for making AI porn, including CSAM.
The arrest follows a federal push against AI-generated abuse material that dates to at least 2024, when the Department of Justice made one of the earliest arrests in the category. After charging a Wisconsin man with spreading thousands of realistic images of prepubescent minors across Telegram and Instagram, the DOJ clarified to law enforcement that CSAM generated by AI is still CSAM.
New Jersey District Attorney Joe Khan said in a statement that his state aligns with the DOJ in treating AI CSAM as equally harmful to CSAM. He said no one is above the law, least of all someone entrusted with upholding it, and that his office will pursue such cases aggressively and hold offenders fully accountable regardless of their profession or title.
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