Chicago police arrested a high school maintenance worker who tried to meet a child for sex after investigators posed as a 15-year-old boy using AI-generated images.
The investigation
Christopher Thomas Mertens began chatting with a profile he believed was a child on a dating app in September. An affidavit by FBI Task Force Officer McKailey Scott states that the Livonia Undercover Resistance to Exploitation Unit (LURE) ran the probe. Scott created an account on the queer-focused app Taimi with an AI-generated image of a teenage-looking male named Caleb and left the age field blank.
An unknown user messaged Caleb and moved the conversation to WhatsApp. After a few minutes, the man asked for the age. When Scott replied 15, the man said “Im interested” and “Im hard now.”
Investigators used Thomson Reuters CLEAR to check the phone number and Clearview AI to scan the face, identifying the suspect as Mertens. For several days, Caleb and Mertens exchanged sexually explicit text messages. Mertens planned to drive to a meetup spot on his day off, assuming Caleb’s parents were away. Police used Flock to track the vehicle and confirm Mertens was heading to the location. Mertens texted Caleb to say he was arriving. Livonia police took him into custody the moment he stepped out of the car.
The confession
Two hours after booking, Mertens asked to speak with Scott. When the officer arrived at the jail, Mertens admitted everything, including his job at a high school in Illinois. The complaint does not name the school.
Using fake personas
Law enforcement has used computer-generated children for years. One of the earliest examples was Sweetie, a virtual girl created by the Dutch children’s rights group Terre des Hommes in 2013 to talk to men online. Today, US border police departments use AI-generated online personas to interact with and monitor protestors and activists.
“Massive Blue is helping cops deploy AI-powered social media bots to talk to people they suspect are anything from violent sex criminals all the way to vaguely defined ‘protesters.”
In August, a 24-year-old Connecticut man was arrested after soliciting an undercover officer who used “age regression technology” to appear as a 14-year-old in videos. He was charged with enticing a minor and criminal attempt to commit risk of injury to a child.
In 2025, a 45-year-old man was arrested after investigators used AI-generated images of children to catch him distributing child sexual abuse material. He was recently sentenced to 12 years in federal prison.
In 2024, New Mexico sued Snapchat after investigators set up a fake account with AI-generated images of children. The platform allegedly recommended this account to “dangerous accounts, including ones named ‘child.rape’ and ‘pedo_lover10,’ in addition to others that are even more explicit,” according to the New Mexico Department of Justice.
Wider concerns
AI-generated child sexual abuse material is a rapidly growing problem for law enforcement. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has reported a massive rise in generative AI child abuse material, with criminals using it to extort and entice children, and children using it to bully and harass other children.
Livonia police did not respond to a request for comment.
