A man who previously worked at a school has received a custodial sentence after using artificial intelligence tools to produce indecent images of female pupils from that institution. A six-year custodial term was imposed on Christopher Savage following his guilty plea to retaining a collection of more than 53,000 still and moving images stored across his own devices.

Before his arrest in September 2024, the 38-year-old had been leading Lowood State High School, a school situated north of Ipswich in Queensland, Australia. Evidence placed before the court showed that Savage had left his position at the school before taking photographs of the girls whose images he later altered through AI tools.

Eight electronic devices taken from his home were found to contain material that investigators flagged for review. Among the victims depicted in the material were children reported to be as young as newborns.

Prosecutors told the court that, over the course of 2023 and 2024, he took photographs of schoolgirls and women drawn from social media platforms and fed them into an AI tool to produce nude images of those individuals. From an encrypted Telegram channel, Savage forwarded the artificially generated content to 13 other accounts, with more than 1,100 additional images depicting child abuse flowing back to him in exchange.

Testimony at Ipswich District Court detailed how Savage had posted statements online indicating a sexual attraction to children. In one exchange, he conveyed to another platform user that his intent was to carry out the sexual abuse of a child. Testimony before the court also included Savage's own statement that he had used the AI-generated material for personal purposes.

More than 20 young people, ranging in age from 12 to 17, have been named by investigators as individuals who appeared in AI-generated material produced by the former teacher.

At the sentencing, Judge Craig Chowdhury noted that a position of trust had been exploited, while one person who had been harmed read a prepared statement describing the lasting effects on their ability to form relationships and the isolation they had experienced when first attempting to speak about what had happened.

The sentencing judge told Savage that he had devoted substantial time to accumulating child sexual abuse material while also targeting children in his care through photography, adding that he had exercised his own free will in pursuing that path. Savage was handed a six-year custodial sentence and will not be considered for parole before early 2029. A suspension of his registration to teach has also been put in place.