An Upper Arlington man who was the first in the nation to be convicted under a 2025 federal law for using AI-generated, sexually explicit imagesto harass and intimidate women has been sentenced to more than a decade in federal prison.
James Strahler, 38, was sentenced Sept. 8 in U.S. District Court in Columbus to 15 years in prison, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Ohio. Strahler pleaded guilty in April to cyberstalking, producing obscene visual representations of child sexual abuse, and publication of digital forgeries. The criminal activity is covered under the Take It Down Act, which was enacted in 2025 by federal lawmakers and signed into law by President Donald Trump.
Prosecutors said that Strahler installed
more than 24 artificial intelligence (AI) platforms and more than 100 AI web-based models on his phone that he used to harass at least six women in central Ohio between December 2024 and June 2025. He sent messages that included nude images of the victims that were both real and AI-generated, prosecutors said.
In one case, Strahler used AI to create pornographic videos depicting one of the women engaged in sexual acts with her father, prosecutors said.
Strahler also posted online AI-generated images of the faces of boys from his community that he would morph onto the bodies of other children or adults, as well as videos he created. Court records say the videos included the boys engaged in sexual activity with older female relatives.
Strahler created more than 700 images of both real victims and animated people and post them to a website that is used to show child sex abuse, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office. Additionally, 2,400 images and videos on his cell phone were flagged for depicting nudity, morphed child sex abuse material and violence, prosecutors said.
Reporter Shahid Meighan can be reached at smeighan@dispatch.com, at ShahidMeighan on X, and at shahidthereporter.dispatch.com on Bluesky.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Upper Arlington man first in nation convicted under AI porn law sentenced to 15 years
