An artificial intelligence tip led investigators to a 25-year-old Parkland man who now faces 11 felony charges related to child sexual abuse images, court records show.
Ray Lekeric was released from jail on $110,000 bail after Broward Sheriff’s investigators arrested him July 10 on charges of possessing and creating sexually explicit images of minors using Grok, an artificial intelligence chatbot built into X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
In May, the chatbot sent an alert to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which then forwarded the information to the South Florida Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force at the Broward Sheriff’s Office.
A search warrant for X’s account, followed by a search warrant for the family’s home, was executed on July 10 by the Sheriff’s Office SWAT team. On the same day, Lekerik was taken into custody.
Investigators say the images were altered versions of real photographs of girls between the ages of 5 and 10 that had been manipulated by Grock.
“It’s our understanding that the AI tool was capable of generating illicit images, but in terms of how many clues there were on either side, we don’t have any evidence yet,” Lekeric’s lawyer, Matthew Baldwin, said.
Baldwin said Lekerik suffers from physical and mental disabilities and likely doesn’t know what he’s doing. He told the South Florida Sun Sentinel that Lekerik was born premature and was diagnosed with cerebellar vermis hypoplasia, an underdeveloped part of the brain.
“You have to understand that this is an extremely disabled person. The ability to even speak is extremely difficult,” Baldwin said. “So even detectives have to resort to (writing), using text and things like that, and it’s extremely difficult to communicate with someone who has the same level of disability.”
The probable cause affidavit states that in an interview after his arrest, Lekeric expressed remorse, admitted that the X account belonged to him and admitted to altering images and searching for similar material online.
“The defendant was qualified and found competent to proceed,” the affidavit states.
Baldwin said he has filed a motion asking that the case be transferred to Broward Mental Health Court and that Lekeric be evaluated for competency.
Lekerik is charged with five counts of producing child sexual abuse material, five counts of possessing child sexual abuse material and one count of collecting child pornography on a computer.
Baldwin said Broward prosecutors had not yet formally filed charges at Wednesday’s hearing.