Two Mason High School students were sentenced Wednesday in Warren County Juvenile Court for separate cases involving AI-generated child sexual abuse material.

Judge Joseph Kirby ordered both to residential treatment and sharply criticized one teen's parents for failing to monitor his phone use.

The first teen, 17, admitted to 52 charges, including pandering sexually oriented material and illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented material. Kirby ordered him to Mary Haven Treatment Center, the county juvenile court's residential facility, for a minimum of four and a half months. He will avoid juvenile detention if he completes the program successfully.

Kirby told the teen's parents that phone safeguards had been put in place but they removed or lessened them.

"You gave him a $1,000 babysitter and just let him have at it," Kirby said, according to WLWT.

The judge wasn't done. He recommended parents take active measures including monitoring, time limits, talking to their children and taking phones away when necessary. The first teen was also banned from having a cell phone or accessing social media.

Kirby noted in court that the teen created AI-generated images of 10 peers but could not be charged because those images were not disseminated and no Ohio law currently addresses that specific conduct. House Bill 786, which would prohibit artificially generated depictions of minors for obscene purposes, was referred to the House Judiciary Committee on March 25 but has not advanced, according to a Transparency Coalition tracking update.

In the second case, reported by FOX19, a teen who was 16 at the time of the offense and 17 at sentencing was found to have used AI to create and share child sexual abuse material. Kirby suspended the teen's commitment to the Ohio Department of Youth Services for a minimum of one year and suspended commitment to the Warren County Juvenile Detention Center with credit for two days served. Both suspensions are contingent on the teen completing programs at Mary Haven and showing "reasonable progress."

The second teen was also banned from electronics, social media and cell phone use, and ordered to pay a $250 fine and $110 in court costs.

Prosecutors said the images in the first case depicted underage girls being sodomized or in various states of nudity. The teen claimed the material was sent to him via social media apps including Discord when he was 15. His attorney argued he was groomed by online predators who sent large zip files of adult and child pornography.

The two Mason cases reflect a broader pattern. A Columbus Dispatch report published July 12 found that deepfakes and AI-generated pornography are a growing part of Ohio's Internet Crimes Against Children investigations.

A sex offender registration determination for the first teen will not be made until after his release from Mary Haven. No next court dates were announced for either case, and HB 786 remains stalled in committee.