A Martin County man has been sentenced to more than 84 years in prison after a court found him guilty on 82 counts tied to child pornography and video voyeurism, in a case investigators say marked the county's first known use of artificial intelligence to generate child sexual abuse images from real photographs of kids.
Daniel Clark Warren, 53, was adjudicated guilty on all counts Wednesday in Martin County, according to CBS12. The court sentenced him to 1,013.1 months in Florida Department of Corrections custody, with credit for 1,002 days already served — a term the station calculates at about 84 years and five months.
Per the same report, the charges included 75 counts of possessing 10 or more images of child pornography and seven counts of video voyeurism involving a victim younger than 16 and an offender 24 or older, according to court records. The court denied a request for a downward departure from the sentence and designated Warren a sexual offender, per handwritten court notes cited in the station's reporting.
How the Case Began
Warren was arrested in 2024 after investigators accused him of using artificial intelligence to create child sexual abuse images from real photos, the station's report notes. The arrest followed a cyber tip that Martin County Sheriff's officials received, which ultimately led to subpoenas and a search warrant, according to TCPalm, which reported that Warren, then 51, was taken into custody on January 26, 2024. Sheriff's officials described the case at the time as a first in Martin County for its use of artificial intelligence in creating such images.
Detective Brian Broughton said Warren used AI to sexualize children's faces, remove clothing, pose the children and generate images depicting sexual activity, according to the CBS12 report. “He takes the face of a child and then he sexualizes that, removes the clothing and poses the child,” Broughton said. Broughton also said Warren was friendly with neighborhood children and that other families were unaware of the activity.
Covert Photos Shared With Others
According to WPTV, prosecutor Kristen Chase said Warren was taking covert photos of neighborhood children and then asking for those photos to be transformed into sexualized images, which he shared with others. The case fits a pattern federal officials have flagged as a growing concern: the Department of Homeland Security describes generative AI CSAM as the production of wholly or partly artificial or digitally created sexualized images of children through digital media.
What Florida Law Allows
Under the state statute governing possession of child sexual abuse material, each photograph, motion picture, image, computer depiction or presentation that is possessed, controlled or intentionally viewed can count as a separate offense, according to the Florida Senate. Florida's sentencing statute also gives courts the authority to impose sentences for primary and additional offenses either concurrently or consecutively, per the Florida Senate's current chapter on sentencing.
