Michigan Cops Used AI-Generated Teen to Arrest Illinois Man

Police in Livonia, Michigan arrested a Chicago-area high school maintenance worker after an FBI Task Force officer created a fake 15-year-old boy on a dating app using an AI-generated image, 404 Media reported.

According to the article, FBI Task Force Officer McKailey Scott set up an account on the queer-focused dating app Taimi with "an AI generated image of a teenage-appearing male with the name 'Caleb,' and no age listed on the profile." When an unknown user moved the conversation to WhatsApp, Scott told him Caleb was 15. The man, Christopher Thomas Mertens, replied "Im interested" and "Im hard now."

Mertens exchanged sexually explicit messages with the account over several days and planned to drive to meet Caleb on his day off. 404 Media writes that "Cops used Flock to look up and track Mertens' car and see that he was driving to the meetup spot, but Mertens was also texting Caleb the entire time to let him know he was on the way and when he arrived." When he got out of the car, Livonia police took him into custody. Two hours after being booked, he asked to speak with Scott and admitted everything, including that he works at a high school in Illinois.

The arrest sits inside a widening pattern. 404 Media notes that in 2025 "a 45-year-old man was arrested after investigators used AI generated images of children to catch him distributing child sexual abuse material," and that he was recently sentenced to 12 years in federal prison. An August case in Connecticut involved investigators using "age regression technology" to charge a man with enticing a minor.