Subjects Arrested For Desecrating Waifus With AI

Two men were arrested in Japan on suspicion of having violated the Copyright Law after creating and selling indecent posters generated with Artificial Intelligence (AI). The defendants, a 36-year-old employee from Yokohama and a 40-year-old freelancer from Shiga, generated explicit illustrations of the girls from “Neon Genesis Evangelion” and “Yu-Gi-Oh!” to sell them in print.

© Nippon Television Network Corporation 映像協力 NNN(Nippon News Network)

According to the police report, the men used AI to generate the images and then printed them as posters that they sold at online auctions without any official authorization. The investigation, according to the report, began when authorities detected these illegal sales during a cyber patrol.

And in fact, the profits were not small: The man from Yokohama would have taken around 10 million yen (more than 60 thousand dollars) to the stock market between May 2023 and March 2024, while the man from Shiga earned about 5.7 million yen (more than 39 thousand dollars ) between July 2023 and April 2024.

With all the evidence in front of them, this pair had no choice but to admit the charges and plead guilty, saying that “they did it to cover their living expenses.” Now this case has raised alarms about the misuse of AI to generate explicit content and sell it online, but wait, isn’t that what some “artists” do on the Internet?

«Those things you always see in buying and selling apps… In the end they were arrested».
«Let them also take the AI-generated images of Uma Musume that are selling in droves on Mercari and Yahoo Auctions».
«I’m sure it was on Yahoo Auctions, right? Let them continue arresting more. They should also regulate FANZA and DLsite».
«Getting these problematic AI users caught makes me laugh».
«AI-generated content has nothing to do with normal derivative works. They collect data from copyrighted material, put it into the AI, click once, generate indecent content and make a lot of money. I want these parasites that violate copyrights to be eliminated».
«Well, well, well, well… This makes the food taste better».
«Could it be that thing that showed up on Yahoo Auctions and ruined searches?».
«I want more people like this to be caught. Not just in the case of AI, there are many out there. Although also, those who buy are partly to blame».
«Seriously, generative AI is never used for anything decent».
«Kanagawa police sometimes do their job well».