Man kept making AI nudes after arrest
The Take It Down Act was passed in May 2025, and Strahler was arrested on federal charges by June.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation was called in after Strahler’s phone was seized in April, after one of his victims called local police. Confronted by the local cops, Strahler admitted to creating and sending the images, then was arrested and jailed.
Once the FBI got involved, an analysis of his device showed that he had “similarly harassed two ex-girlfriends and their mothers,” The New York Times reported. The FBI also found images of two boys on the phone.
That arrest was not enough to stop Strahler from creating more images, though. While he was on pre-trial release in the first case, another Ohio police department arrested him in June after he continued sending fake nudes to harass one of his victims. A search of his new phone uncovered more than 2,400 images and videos “depicting nudity, child sexual abuse material, or violence,” the press release said.
Celebrating Strahler’s conviction, the US Attorney in the Southern District of Ohio, Dominick S. Gerace II, said that his office is “committed to using every tool at our disposal to hold accountable offenders like Strahler, who seek to intimidate and harass others by creating and circulating this disturbing content.”
“We believe Strahler is the first person in the United States to be convicted under the Take It Down Act,” Gerace said. “We will not tolerate the abhorrent practice of posting and publicizing AI-generated intimate images of real individuals without consent.”
On X, Melania Trump also claimed the conviction as a win after championing the Take It Down Act and joining Donald Trump in signing it into law. On Tuesday, she praised Gerace’s team for putting an end to Strahler’s harassment and “protecting Americans from cybercrimes in this new digital age.”
