Oakland County man charged after making AI porn of influencer

SOUTHFIELD, Mich. (FOX 2) - An Oakland County man is facing federal charges after authorities said he extorted a social media influencer by using artificial intelligence to make graphic porn of the victim.

Authorities said Josh Stilman used AI to make nude photos and videos of a woman, who is not being identified.

"He assured me that he was a stand-up gentleman, had a wife, had a daughter, and respected women immensely," the victim told FOX 2 in March.

In the affidavit filed in federal court, Stilman is accused of making graphic images of the victim and threatening to release the images online.

The backstory:

The woman is a content creator from Oregon and does boudoir photography, among other photography sessions.

A year ago, she opened up her DMs and found a naked photo of what looked like herself. But it wasn't her. It was an AI-generated image made to look like her with taunting and aggressive messages from an anonymous follower.

That follower was later determined to be Stilman, police say.

Michigan man allegedly used AI to create pornography of an influencer, she fought back

Imagine opening up your direct messages to find pictures of you, but something is off. The naked, graphic photos are not you at all, but generated by AI, created by a husband and father.

She says she didn't know what his intentions were and kept him at bay by putting a thumbs up on the photos. But that changed in March when he sent an album of AI nude photos with a threat that he would post them online if she didn't respond.

He went on to talk about masturbation and then threatened sexual assault against her if she didn’t write back.

"If you’re going to start making sexual assault threats at me, that’s something I take very seriously, and that’s when I was like absolutely not, I’m going to come after you for that," she said.

And she did. She and her nearly 100,000 followers tracked the man down to Oakland County.

The graphic designer is, as he said, married with children. 

Once she figured out who he was, he blocked her everywhere, but the public shaming didn't stop. The woman was on a mission to stop what happened to her from happening to someone else.

"If I can help mitigate these things from happening in the future, I think that I have to at this point," she said.