He unknowingly photographed the students of a middle school in the province of Catania, where he worked as a school assistant, and then edited the resulting images using artificial intelligence, stripping them naked (deep nude) and making them appear next to him, as if the shot had been taken while they were together.
This is the discovery made by the Catania postal police during an investigation into the distribution of child pornography. Investigators were astonished to find in the suspect's online archives, a 58-year-old school assistant, both the "original" photos of the girls photographed in various areas of the school and the "faked" photos, altered with artificial intelligence, in which the unsuspecting students were naked and posing next to him.
A case of deep nudity that contributed to the arrest in flagrante delicto of the 58-year-old, from whom the Catania postal police seized a large quantity of child pornography images and videos, including those featuring child victims. After a validation hearing before the preliminary investigations judge, the man was placed under house arrest.
The investigation by the Catania Public Prosecutor's Office's team responsible for the protection of minors and vulnerable groups stemmed from a report by an Italian man whose account contained images and videos of child pornography. The report was forwarded by the U.S. NGO National Center for Missing Exploited Children (NCMEC) to the National Center for the Fight against Online Child Pornography (CNCPO) of the Rome Postal Police, who forwarded the report to their colleagues in the Etna region. Cyber investigations by cyber specialists at the Catania Postal Police led to the identification of the school employee, against whom the Public Prosecutor's Office issued a warrant for a personal and computer search.
A significant amount of child pornography was found on the 58-year-old's computer devices, as well as nude images of female students from his school.
According to the Meter association, the phenomenon of deep nudity is on the rise: last year, during online monitoring activities, they discovered 8,213 minors who had been victims of images manipulated to simulate nudity or sexual acts without consent. The association believes it is "essential to strengthen prevention, digital education, and investigative tools, as well as promoting greater responsibility on the part of platforms and developers," and is appealing to "schools, families, and institutions to make the protection of minors in the digital environment a shared priority."
(Unioneonline)
