I don't think people are trying to give him the benefit of the doubt as much as this story is misleading. It only really makes sense if the pictures are of adults because if it was child porn it wouldn't be a news story. "Man goes to jail for having edited CP" isn't newsworthy in the same way as "man goes to jail for having AI generated CP". People's bias here is to just assume that they are being told something interesting because otherwise there is no reason to share this information.