First arrests in Japan for making obscene materials with AI

In a first in Japan, four people have been arrested for making nude pictures of women using generative AI and then selling them online as posters.

It is first such time in Japan that an arrest has been made for selling obscene materials made entirely using AI. (Though we have seen at least one arrest before for a man who used AI to decensor porn.)

According to investigators, 44-year-old Tomohiro Mizutani and two other men and a 27-year-old woman sold such materials on multiple occasions via an online auction site in around October 2024. The materials were posters featuring printed versions of an AI-generated obscene image.

The suspects have admitted the charges, according to media reports, which included footage of the quartet doing the perp walk and the computers, printer, mobile phones, scanners, and other devices seized by Tokyo Metropolitan Police.

They used free AI software to create a wide range of female nudes, selling the posters for several thousand yen each. In a year, the Aichi-based Mizutani had apparently made ¥10 million through such means.

In order to hide the explicit nature of the products from the auction website, they pixellated preview images of the posters, though the actual posters were uncensored. Media reports do not clarify but it’s probably safe to assume this means that the images contained uncensored genitalia, which is conventionally the line used to interpret Japan’s ambiguous obscenity law (and hence all legal porn features “mosaic” pixellation on the penis and vagina).

AI has ushered in a new era in many ways, including AI porn and AI photo books, but some things remain unchanged: Japan’s peculiar attitude toward obscenity, that it has probably the world’s biggest porn industry and yet showing a penis or pussy is taboo. And whether that’s filmed, drawn, or AI-generated, it’s still “obscene,” as Mizutani and his collaborators have found out.

On the other hand, Japan currently does not have any law that would cover deep fake porn other than the obscenity, child pornography, and privacy laws.

It is not known if the AI-made images were designed to look “original” or like a particular celebrity, though are described as showing “nonexistent women.”