Knightdale police added a tenth felony sexual-exploitation charge against a juvenile accused of using artificial intelligence to create explicit images of teenage girls. Police confirmed the additional case after parents said more girls may have had ordinary photographs manipulated into explicit depictions. Knightdale police confirmed that the juvenile now faces ten Class E felony charges of second-degree sexual exploitation of a minor.
The tenth charge concerns a girl whose parent had previously told WRAL that manipulated images involving her daughter were not included in the initial counts. Several parents told WRAL that non-explicit photographs from social media were allegedly altered to create explicit depictions. State lawmakers revised sexual-exploitation language in 2024 to address technologically generated or modified visual material.
Police said the investigation involves juvenile victims and a juvenile suspect and declined to release identities or additional investigative details. North Carolina's statute includes digital or computer-generated depictions created or modified by algorithms or artificial intelligence. The statute still uses a defined concept of sexual activity, which can require image-specific legal analysis.
A criminal charge is an allegation; juvenile proceedings and privacy rules restrict what can be publicly reported.
The remaining evidentiary limit is specific: The number of potential victims, the images' distribution, the tools used and the evidence supporting each charge were not public. The next records expected to change the factual picture are whether police identify additional charges or victims without compromising juvenile privacy and how prosecutors and courts apply the amended statutory definitions. Until those records appear, the attributed figures, filings and official descriptions remain the most current public account and may be revised by the institutions that produced them. Each figure refers to the date and scope identified above; it does not imply a later total or broader category. Subsequent orders, filings, datasets or official updates can revise those figures without changing the documented sequence of events at the cutoff.