A pedophile who made thousands of pounds creating child abuse images using AI and real photos of children has been jailed for 18 years in a landmark case.

Hugh Nelson used a 3D character generator to transform ordinary, non-explicit images of children into images of child abuse, before selling them on an Internet forum used by artists.

People who knew the children in the real world would send images of them to the 27-year-old.

Nelson, from Bolton, would then charge his pedophile ring £80 for a new ‘character’. After that it cost £10 per frame to animate them in different, explicit positions.

Over an 18-month period, Nelson admits to making around £5,000 from the sale of these images.

In some cases, Nelson then encouraged his clients to rape and sexually assault the children, the court heard.

During an interview with police, the pedophile told officers: “A lot of my characters were ordered around by their fathers, uncles, family friends.”

Jeanette Smith, CPS specialist prosecutor, said: “This is one of the first cases of its kind to demonstrate a link between people like Nelson, who create computer-generated images using technology, and the actual offenses resulting therefrom. behind that.”

A number of pedophiles have been sent to prison recently for using AI to create images of child abuse.

In Nelson’s case, however, police were for the first time able to link the images he had generated to real children.

Nelson, who had no previous convictions, was arrested at the family home in Egerton, Bolton, in June last year and told police he had a sexual interest mainly in girls aged around 12 years old.

The children whose photos he received were all based abroad, in France, Italy and the United States.

Police in these countries received information about Nelson’s offenses and further arrests were made.

Although this is the first time someone has been prosecuted for creating these types of child abuse images, authorities are preparing to prosecute many more.

At the Internet Watch Foundation in Cambridge, dozens of analysts scour the Internet every day, tracking down images of child abuse and removing them from the Internet.

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In the last six months, they have seen more images of child abuse made using AI than in all of last year.

Dan Sexton, the association’s technical director, said: “Our job has always been difficult anyway.

“(But) we never had to face the possibility that someone could download software onto their computer and create an infinite amount of new images.

“They use as much as they can until the hard drives fill up. This is a new type of damage that we are not prepared for.”

One of the association’s analysts, known only as Jeff when working to protect his identity, expressed concern about how convincing the AI ​​images become.

“We’re getting to the point where even a trained analyst would have a hard time determining whether it’s real or not,” he said.

In August, Nelson pleaded guilty at Bolton Crown Court to 11 offenses including three counts of inciting the rape of a child under 13, one count of attempting to entice a boy of under 16 years of age to engage in a sexual act, three counts each. and making indecent images, and one count of possessing prohibited images.

At an earlier court appearance in July 2023, he also pleaded guilty to four counts of distributing indecent pseudo-photographs of children and publishing an obscene article.

Detective Constable Carly Baines, of Greater Manchester Police, said the case was “deeply horrific”.

She added: “It became clear to us, after extensive searches of his numerous devices by digital forensics experts, that his behavior went well beyond what he clearly saw as a ‘business opportunity’.

“Not only was he creating and selling these images, but he was also engaging in depraved sexualized discussions about children online and going so far as to encourage people interested in his online content to commit contact offenses such as rape against children they knew or were related to.

(c) Sky News 2024: Pedophile Hugh Nelson who made child abuse an im