FLORIDA — An AI tip led investigators to a 25-year-old Florida man now facing 11 felony counts related to child sexual abuse images, court records show.
Ray Lequerique, of Parkland, has been released from jail on $110,000 bond after Broward Sheriff’s Office investigators arrested him on July 10 on charges of possessing and creating sexually explicit images of minors using Grok, the AI chatbot built into X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
The chatbot sent an alert in May to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, which then turned that information over to the South Florida Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force at the Broward Sheriff’s Office.
A search warrant for the X account, followed by a search warrant for the family’s home, was executed on July 10 by the Sheriff’s Office SWAT team. Lequerique was taken into custody that day.
Investigators say the images were altered versions of real photographs of girls who appeared to be between the ages of 5 and 10 that were manipulated using Grok.
“It’s our understanding that the AI tool was able to generate illegal images, but in terms of how much prompting there was from one side or the other, we don’t have any evidence of anything yet,” said Lequerique’s attorney, Matthew Baldwin.
Baldwin said Lequerique has physical and mental disabilities and likely did not understand what he was doing. He told the South Florida Sun Sentinel that Lequerique was born prematurely and has been diagnosed with cerebellar vermis hypoplasia, an underdevelopment of part of the brain.
“You have to understand that this is someone who has extreme disabilities. The ability to even speak is extremely difficult,” Baldwin said. “So even the detectives have to resort to [writing], using text, things like that nature, and it’s extremely difficult to communicate with someone who has a disability to his level.”
The probable cause affidavit states that in an interview after his arrest, Lequerique expressed remorse, acknowledged the X account was his and admitted to altering images and searching online for similar material.
“The defendant was qualified and was found to be competent to proceed,” the affidavit said.
Baldwin said he has filed a motion asking that the case be transferred to Broward’s mental health court and that Lequerique be evaluated for competency.
Lequerique is facing five counts of generated child sex abuse material, five counts of possession of child sexual abuse material and one count of compiling child pornography on a computer.
Baldwin said that as of a hearing Wednesday, the Broward State Attorney’s Office had not yet formally filed charges.