JBER soldier facing federal court charges for using artificial intelligence to create images of child sexual abuse

A soldier stationed at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage was arrested on Friday on suspicion of using artificial intelligence to create explicit material and storing tens of thousands of images depicting child sexual abuse on multiple cell phones.

Trooper Spc. Seth Herrera, 34, was charged on Aug. 22 with transporting, receiving and possessing child pornography. Herrera pleaded not guilty to all three charges during his first court appearance Tuesday in federal court in Anchorage. He said little and kept his eyes downcast as the charges against him were read.

Herrera is a heavy equipment operator assigned to the 17th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion, 11th Airborne Division, based at JBER, according to John Pennell, a spokesman for the unit. Herrera remains an active soldier, Pennell wrote in an email.

The investigation began in July, according to Alaska State Troopers, who helped arrest Herrera last week. He has been in custody at the Anchorage Correctional Complex since then.

Investigators linked Herrera to the explicit material when he tried to access a link that showed the sexual abuse of two girls, prosecutors wrote in an arrest memo.

Department of Homeland Security investigators executed a search warrant for his home on the base and found three phones containing “tens of thousands of videos and images” depicting violent sexual acts on children as young as infants, the memorandum said. Herrera also used encrypted messaging apps and created his own group to receive and store images of child sexual abuse, it said.

In court, federal prosecutor Rachel Rothberg detailed what Herrera did in connection with accessing, creating and hiding child sexual abuse material online, arguing that he should not be released from prison pending a preliminary hearing. Conditions.

“Mr. Herrera poses a danger to the community,” Rothberg said.

U.S. Judge Kyle F. Reardon rejected Herrera's public defender's request for release to an assisted living facility.

“The court is troubled by the allegations in this case,” Reardon said, noting that Herrera appears to be very adept at concealing the acquisition of illegal digital material. “I will order his detention because he poses a danger to the community.”

Because of his position in the military, Herrera had frequent contact with children, including in his four-family home on base, and had access to military families and their children when he transported relief supplies from Anchorage to Fairbanks, the memorandum said.

Case files do not specifically refer to children from Alaska. Officials at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Anchorage did not respond to a request for information Tuesday.

Herrera joined the Army in 2019 and moved to Alaska last year, Pennell said. He was previously stationed at Fort Sill, Oklahoma; Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri; Fort Bliss, Texas; and South Korea.

According to prosecutors, Herrera had stored child sexual abuse material on devices for at least 3 1/2 years as of 2021.

He also secretly recorded footage of children he knew in locations outside Alaska in 2022 and 2023, the memorandum says. Herrera used a home security camera and then deployed an artificial intelligence program to transform the images into material depicting child sexual abuse, it says. He is also accused of collecting photos and videos of minors from their social media and using them to create sexual content.

“The defendant used various web-based software to create morphed child pornography and other material that exploited children – taking innocent images of minors known to him and running them through an AI chatbot to undress them or add pornographic bodies,” prosecutors wrote.

AI software can combine real photos of people with sexually explicit material to create realistic content, sometimes called deepfakes. Assistant Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in a statement that the misuse of generative AI “accelerates the spread of dangerous content, including child sexual abuse material.”

According to a report by the Stanford Internet Observatory, the flood of AI-generated images could make it difficult for authorities to identify cases where children need to be rescued.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation issued a public notice in March warning that “realistic computer-generated imagery” of child sexual abuse was illegal. Several other cases involving generative AI imagery have resulted in arrests in other parts of the country. A child psychiatrist in North Carolina was sentenced to 40 years in prison and a registered sex offender in Pennsylvania was sentenced to more than 14 years in prison for possessing deepfake images of child sexual abuse.

Investigators asked anyone with information about Herrera's actions or who may have encountered someone in person or online using his name to contact the Department of Homeland Security Investigations Hotline at 1-877-447-4847.