A US judge just decided that AI-generated sexual images of fictional children are protected speech under the First Amendment. Not illegal. Not a gray area. Constitutionally protected. This is the moment someone rewrote the legal framework around abuse material by swapping "real" for "AI-generated" and the court took it seriously as a free speech argument. The distinction between fictional and real victims apparently matters more than the fact that these are still images designed to sexualize children, real or not. It's the kind of ruling that gets installed quietly and then used as precedent to hollow out every child protection law that follows.