Ohio man first convicted under ban on deepfake pornography

An Ohio man was convicted Tuesday for using artificial intelligence to generate sexually explicit images of women. He also used pornographic images, both real and AI-generated, to intimidate and harass women. James Strahler II, age 37, was convicted under a 2025 law that criminalized the nonconsensual sharing of intimate imagery and AI-generated deepfakes. Strahler pleaded guilty to cyberstalking, producing obscene visual representations of child sexual abuse, and publication of digital forgeries, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Columbus said.

U.S. Attorney Dominick S. Gerace II said he thought Strahler was the first person to be convicted under this law, also known as the Take it Down Act.

First lady Melania Trump praised the attorney’s office for the first-of-its-kind win in court. Convictions like these protect Americans from cybercrimes in this new digital age, she said. The first lady rallied support for the measure, which passed the Senate and House with landslide votes of approval.

What were Strahler’s crimes? Between December 2024 and June 2025, he created pornographic AI videos of at least six adult victims and distributed them to their coworkers, the attorney’s office said. Strahler further harassed the women with phone calls, messages, and online posts. He also generated explicit material of young boys in the community and posted hundreds of images to a site dedicated to child sexual abuse. He made the deepfakes using more than two dozen AI platforms and 100 AI web-based models that he had installed on his phone.

Strahler was first arrested for federal charges in 2025. He will be sentenced at a later date.

Dig deeper: Read Christina Grube’s report about the bipartisan Take it Down Act being signed into law.