A Gaston man is among the first charged in South Carolina for artificial intelligence-generated child sexual abuse material.

Adam Asad Kelton, 25, of Lexington County, was arrested on two charges connected to the sexual exploitation of minors; investigators say the files involved were generated by artificial intelligence, according to a Nov. 4 press release from South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson.

“Investigators state Kelton possessed files of artificial intelligence-generated child sexual abuse material,” the press release read. “This is one of the first individuals charged in S.C.'s new statute making artificial intelligence-generated CSAM a felony.”

According to Enough Abuse, a Massachusetts-based organization working to prevent child sexual abuse, 45 states, including South Carolina, had enacted laws criminalizing AI-generated or computer-edited child sexual abuse material as of August 2025.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reported receiving 67,000 instances of AI-generated child sexual abuse material in 2024.

After the General Assembly passed Senate Bills 28 and 29 in May 2025, criminalizing the “creation, possession, and distribution of AI-generated sexual images of individuals without their consent,” Wilson called the bill heading to Gov. Henry McMaster’s desk a victory.

“This is a major victory for victims and a major blow to predators who think they can hide behind a keyboard,” Wilson said in a May 9, 2025, press release. “South Carolina is leading the nation in tackling the abuse of artificial intelligence to humiliate, exploit, and destroy lives. These bills give us the teeth we need to go after the sick individuals using AI to create fake pornography of real people, many of them women and children.” 

The legislation also requires online platforms to detect and prevent child sexual abuse material, defining morphed images as “digitally created or altered explicit images where a person is depicted in a sexual act they did not participate in.”

Kelton was arrested on Oct. 30, 2025, and charged with two counts of “possession of a visual depiction or representation of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct, activity, or nudity,” which could result in 10 years in prison per count.

Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force investigators from the Lexington County Sheriff's Department made the arrest.

According to earlier reporting from the Chronicle, ICAC has been in operation for almost 30 years and has made over 89,400 arrests as a result of complaints received.

“We are a national network of 61 coordinated task forces, representing over 5,400 federal, state, and local law enforcement, dedicated to investigating, prosecuting and developing effective responses to internet crimes against children,” the ICAC website reads.

The Lexington County Sheriff’s Office has two investigators who primarily work with ICAC, and they report that in 2023, they received 94 cyber tips and made 28 arrests; in 2024, they received 74 cyber tips and made 16 arrests.

With state laws now in place in many places throughout the country criminalizing AI-generated and computer-edited child sexual abuse material, Enough Abuse predicts a steep uptick in ICAC arrests.

Enough Abuse also says AI-generated child sexual abuse material poses dangers to real children.

“They can use parts of images of real children to create a composite image that is unidentifiable as a particular child, and in a way that prevents even an expert from concluding that parts of images of real children were used,” the organization says on its website. “Artificially-generated or computer-edited CSAM further re-victimizes actual child victims, as their images are collected from the Internet and studied by artificial intelligence tools to create new images.”