Danish Top Court Backs Jail Term in Landmark AI Child-Abuse Case

Denmark’s Supreme Court upheld an 18-month prison sentence for a 31-year-old man for possessing and distributing tens of thousands of AI-generated sexual images depicting children, in a closely watched test of how existing child-abuse laws apply to artificial content.

AI-generated sexual images of minors are covered by Denmark’s criminal code even when the people depicted are fictional, and their fictional nature shouldn’t result in a lighter sentence, the court said on Thursday. The ruling follows differing conclusions from lower courts over the appropriate punishment in the case.

“When determining the sentence for possessing and distributing sexual material depicting persons under 18, no consideration should be given to whether the persons are presumed to be fictional,” the court said in the ruling. None of the man’s sentence was suspended.

It’s Denmark’s first conviction involving the production and distribution of AI-generated child sexual-abuse material, giving the Supreme Court its first opportunity to set guidance on how such offenses should be punished under Danish law. The case centers on a man from the city of Randers who produced more than 36,000 realistic AI-generated sexual images depicting children and distributed them online through a website and chat channel. Some were sold through a subscription service, generating at least 25,000 kroner ($3,700), according to court documents.

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The man, who was 28 when police raided his home in late 2023, has admitted the underlying conduct but argued that the artificially generated images weren’t covered by the criminal provision because they weren’t based on real people.

Last year the case spawned an international police operation targeting hundreds of buyers of the images. Authorities used payment records to identify 273 individuals and arrested 25 people around the world as part of the operation.

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In Denmark, two lower courts held that realistic, entirely artificial images can fall under the country’s existing child-abuse-material law, but reached markedly different conclusions on punishment.

The District Court sentenced the man to 15 months in prison in January 2025, but largely suspended the sentence, noting that there was no proof the AI models had been trained on actual abuse imagery. Later that year, the High Court imposed 18 months of unconditional prison time, citing the scale of the material, the organized nature of the distribution and the fact that some of it was sold for profit.