Student arrested for selling AI-generated obscene images

On September 29, Tokyo Metropolitan Police referred a 19-year-old male first-year university student from Fujisawa, Kanagawa Prefecture, to the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office on suspicion of distributing obscene images and gambling, among other charges.

He allegedly sold posters featuring obscene images created using an image-generating AI, and then used the proceeds to gamble at online casinos.

According to a senior Tokyo Metropolitan Police official quoted by the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, the student is suspected of making and selling AI-generated obscene images obtained from an overseas website in October last year. He then visited foreign casino websites between April and July this year to gamble away his money.

During voluntary questioning, the student has admitted to the charges. “I was selling the posters to win back money I lost at online casinos,” he is quoted as saying.

The “obscene” part here likely refers to the depiction of genitalia. The usual interpretation of Japan’s obscenity law is that genitalia should not be shown, hence the Japanese adult video industry pixellates cocks and pussies in its content, though exceptions are common (most famously, “hair nude” full-frontal photography shoots, which seem to get a free pass because they are regarded as “artistic”).

The male student put the posters up for auction online, giving them titles like “AI Beauty.” He sold them for low amounts — between ¥300 to ¥2,000 — from August to October last year, earning a grand total of approximately ¥280,000. This is essentially chump change and we expect the police and prosecutors have only pursued the case because he was a soft target and they could make an example of him.

The police rumbled his obscene posters during online searches and began investigating. Though police are stepping up efforts to arrest AI-generated obscenity, as we saw in April this year, we think the real crime they want to target here is the gambling at online casino.

The student deposited his earnings into casino websites like Sportsbet in Curacao, Netherlands, and Central America. He reportedly bet a total of approximately ¥600,000 between February last year and July this year, losing about ¥200,000.

According to a study by the National Police Agency reported earlier this year, about 3.37 million Japanese have gambled on online casino sites at least once, but 40% claimed they did not know that doing so was illegal.

A new law was passed this year banning online ads for such casinos, and both police and banks have stepped up their efforts to tell people that online gambling is illegal.

Most online casino gamblers in Japan are in their twenties, closely followed by those in their thirties.