Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced on Wednesday, October 28, two connected actions from Orlando: criminal charges against a Kissimmee man who faces 100 felony counts involving child sexual abuse material and images depicting sexual activity with animals, and a separate civil lawsuit against the operator of an artificial intelligence platform that the state alleges lets users create sexualised images of real people — including children — without their consent. The Floridian and Florida National News both reported the announcement, which Uthmeier also posted on his official X account the same day.

Source: Florida National News

The criminal defendant is Jerry Jesus Reyes, 26, of Kissimmee, in Osceola County in Central Florida. The charges are allegations: Reyes is presumed innocent unless proven guilty, and the allegations against the company in the civil case have likewise not been proven in court. No child is named or identified in the announcement, and none is identified in this report.

How the criminal case began

According to the attorney general's office, the investigation began with a CyberTipline report from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children about activity on a Snapchat account. Detectives with the Osceola County Sheriff's Office Internet Crimes Against Children Unit used subpoenas and search warrants to link the account to Reyes, authorities said, and reported finding files depicting the sexual abuse of young children and videos of prohibited sexual activity involving a person and an animal.

The 100 counts break down as 86 counts of unlawful possession of materials depicting sexual performance by a child, 13 counts of unlawful possession of materials depicting sexual activity with animals, and one count of transmitting child pornography by an electronic device or equipment, according to the announcement. The possession counts involving children were reclassified as first-degree felonies because the case involved 10 or more images; first-degree felonies generally carry a maximum of 30 years per count under Florida law. The transmission count is a second-degree felony carrying a five-year mandatory minimum and a statutory maximum of 15 years, and third-degree felonies generally carry up to five years per count.

"There is nothing more evil than the sexual exploitation of children, and anyone who possesses, shares, or creates these images is an active participant in that abuse," Uthmeier said in a statement. "Predators who traffic in the abuse of children and animals have no place in Florida." Reyes is being held at the Osceola County Jail on $100,000 bond, with conditions that include no access to the internet and no contact with minor children, the attorney general's office said. Senior Assistant Statewide Prosecutor Lauryn Day is prosecuting the case in the Ninth Judicial Circuit, which covers Osceola and Orange counties.

The separate lawsuit against the AI platform

In the civil case, filed in Sarasota County, the state sued Rengstorff Consulting Ltd., the operator of the A2E artificial intelligence platform and its associated mobile applications. The complaint alleges that A2E allows users to upload photographs or videos of real people, including children, and generate nude or sexually explicit depictions of them without consent, and that it permits users to digitally alter adults to appear underage in sexualised imagery — practices often described as 'nudify' tools. AI-generated child sexual abuse material is a criminal offence under Florida law.

The state alleges that although A2E's terms prohibit certain abusive content, the company failed to enforce those restrictions through adequate monitoring, consent verification, account termination or reporting of illegal material to law enforcement. "Despite purported prohibitions in its terms of service, A2E fails to implement meaningful monitoring, consent verification, account termination, or reporting to law enforcement," the attorney general's release states. The complaint also cites separate criminal investigations in Tampa and Tallahassee in which people allegedly used A2E to generate child sexual abuse material.

Background: why states are moving on AI-generated abuse imagery

The Florida action sits in a wider push by U.S. states against AI tools that can strip clothing from photographs or sexualise images of real people without consent — technology that prosecutors say has moved abuse imagery from hidden forums into ordinary phone apps. Florida's theory in this case is a consumer-protection one: it treats the alleged gap between the platform's stated prohibitions and its actual enforcement as a deceptive and unfair trade practice, which is why the suit was brought under the state's trade-practices law in Sarasota County rather than as a criminal case against the company.

What happens next

In the criminal case, Reyes faces arraignment and trial in the Ninth Judicial Circuit; if convicted, he faces decades in state prison, with any total depending on the counts proven and whether sentences run concurrently or consecutively, and he remains entitled to the presumption of innocence throughout. In the civil case, Rengstorff Consulting will have the opportunity to respond to the complaint in Sarasota County, and a court will decide on the injunction and penalties the state seeks. Responses from Reyes or his attorney and from the company were not included in the materials available to the outlets reporting the announcement.

For families in Florida's diaspora communities — including the Punjabi families of the Orlando–Kissimmee corridor — the two announcements are a reminder of the practical checks officials urge: know which apps children use, treat any request to upload photographs of real people into 'nudify' or face-swap tools as a red flag, and report suspected child exploitation material to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's CyberTipline.