Three men and one woman have been arrested in Japan for allegedly selling explicit posters generated by artificial intelligence (AI) through online auctions, in the first such case in the country.
The four suspects in their 20s to 50s had reportedly fed an AI software a huge volume of obscene images to learn from them to generate the fictitious images, according to public broadcaster NHK and other local media outlets. They used search terms such as “legs open” to create new images of fictitious women in certain poses and situations.
Marking the images as “AI beauties” on posters, the suspects sold them for several thousand yen each, Tokyo police said on Tuesday. To circumvent the ban on such sales via online auctions, they displayed censored images but delivered uncensored versions to buyers, The Mainichi reported.
Among those arrested for distributing and displaying obscene objects to buyers was Tomohiro Mizutani, a 44-year-old retail worker from Aichi prefecture.
Mizutani told authorities that he became involved in the illicit trade after finding out that he could make a huge profit from it. He was reportedly making sales of as much as 10 million yen (US$70,000) over about a year from the images.
Another suspect, Suganuma Takashi, 53, said he learned to make the AI-generated posters with the intention of selling them, NHK reported.
AloJapan.com