FOND DU LAC, Wis. (WLUK) — WARNING: Some may find the contents of this story disturbing.

The dark side of artificial intelligence rears its ugly head with a first-of-its-kind case in Wisconsin, tackling the problem of images that are illegal, despite not being real.

Meillo Schneider, 20, faces seven counts of possession of virtual child pornography for allegedly accessing computer-generated child pornography.

Schneider made an initial court appearance Wednesday, where a $100,000 cash bond was set. He returns to court on January 3, 2025 for a preliminary hearing.

After a review of the defendants' Amazon account a large amount of child pornography was located. Furthermore, a manual on how to have safe sex with infants was located. A screen recording of a game where you sexually assault children, many animated or AI images of children being sexually assaulted, including infants," said Assistant District Attorney Hannah Krueger during Schneider's initial court appearance.

If convicted, each count carries a minimum of three years in prison, with a maximum of up to 25 years in the prison system.

According to the criminal complaint, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children alerted the sheriff’s department about an address where the material was accessed.

There were over 13,000 files included in the data provided by Amazon.com Inc. Corporation Service Company and Amazon Photos Trust and Safety Team. Det. Tikkanen briefly reviewed the material visually. Det. Tikkanen could see there were thousands of JPG and GIF files of anime/artistic renderings of child sexual abuse material,” the complaint states. “Some of these images were hard to distinguish if they were AI generated or if they were real, unidentified victims.

Lt. Alex Volm with the Fond du Lac County Sheriff's Office explained, "It's child pornography that can be considered life-like or photo realistic. So it's not an actual person that's being depicted in the images, but it's a computer generated photo realistic image."

Possession of child pornography has been illegal in Wisconsin for decades. Wisconsin lawmakers passed a bill earlier this year which added AI-generated content to child pornography possession laws.

The case against Schneider marks the first time Fond du Lac County has prosecuted a case like this.

Volm said, "In these cases I wouldn't really consider them victimless. I'd say if anything, society would be considered the victim, because this is a person, just based on our investigation, that they weren't just really looking at the virtual child pornography in a bubble, so to say. So there was a tendency that this could have gone to a hands-on type of offense."

The complaint details the contents of several of the files.

“It would appear this user was researching child sexual dolls. There were images that showed realistic looking children posed sexually,” the complaint states.

When interviewed by police Schneider “went on to explain that everything he watched was for self-gratification and not for sharing with other people,” according to the complaint.

When asked he had ever viewed any pornography that would be considered illegal or dangerous, he replied “By this country's standards, sadly yes. But I would hope this country also understands that I'm not going to re-distribute it or like sell it. Like I said I just want it for personal gratification,” the complaint states.

The complaint does not contain allegations Schneider generated any of the content.

Schneider allegedly had sexually-based chats with someone who purportedly was a female teen from Canada. Schneider also faces one count of resisting an officer for allegedly physically resisting officers when they arrested him last week.