Dad jailed for using 'nudify' bot to make and share AI image of schoolgirl

A father of two has been jailed for using a “nudify” bot to make a fake naked image of a schoolgirl before sharing it on the internet.

Scott Sheldon, 36, sent the fake picture of the girl to users of an anonymous chat service.

Experts have issued several warnings about the rise of nudification apps and the potential for fake nude imagery to inflict serious harm on victims, particularly when used to create child sexual abuse material.

Stirling Sheriff Court heard the child sex abuse image was classified by police as category C.

In October last year, police received information about a social media account belonging to Sheldon.

A search warrant was obtained for his home in Grangemouth and it was raided.

A tablet computer was seized, and 34 child sex abuse images and one video were found on it.

The material featured boys and girls aged approximately ten to 15 years old. All were categorised as B and C on the standard scale of seriousness for child sexual abuse images.

Some of the images were found on a Telegram social media app, which was installed on the tablet.

Police found a chat between Sheldon and an artificial intelligence bot on the Telegram app, which generates nude pictures from images of real people.

Sheldon used the program to generate 12 indecent pseudo-images of a female child.

This child was identified as a teenage girl known to Sheldon.

On October 14, 2025, one of the images of the child – which police assessed as a Category C – was distributed between Sheldon and other users of an app called AnonChat.

In August, he pled guilty to downloading and distributing child sex abuse images.

He returned to court on Wednesday, where the sheriff told him there was “no alternative” to a custodial sentence.

Sheriff Keith O’Mahony placed Sheldon on the sex offenders’ register for ten years in addition to imposing the 12-month jail term.

He said: “You pled guilty not just to possession but the distribution of images and that clearly affects the sentencing decision in this case.”

Sheldon showed no emotion as he was handcuffed to a guard and led to the cells.

Last year, the UK government said it would ban so-called nudification apps as part of efforts to tackle misogyny online.

New laws, announced on in December, will make it illegal to create and supply AI tools letting users edit images to seemingly remove someone’s clothing.

The new offences would build on existing rules around sexually explicit deepfakes and intimate image abuse, the government said.