A federal judge sentenced a Hilliard man to 14 years in prison for distributing real child pornography, as well as creating AI-generated images of child pornography from photos of real children.
Austin Pittman, 35, pleaded guilty to the crimes in December 2025. U.S. District Judge Douglas R. Cole’s sentence was announced on May 11.
The Franklin County Internet Crimes against Children task force got multiple tips about Pittman’s activity on Kik, a mobile chat app, in January 2025.
Law enforcement executed a search warrant in April 2025 at Pittman’s home, where “numerous devices” were seized. Pittman had images of children he had access to on his cellphone, which he edited with AI software to make them appear naked. He distributed those images on online platforms for child sexual material.
Pittman was also the target of a 2024 investigation while at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, where he had uploaded 47 files of child pornography to Kik, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Columbus reported in a press release.
Anna Lynn Winfrey is a reporter for The Columbus Dispatch. She can be reached at awinfrey@dispatch.com.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Hilliard man gets 14 years for AI child pornography
Reporting by Anna Lynn Winfrey, Columbus Dispatch / The Columbus Dispatch
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