In this week’s episode, the Abuse Team discusses the increasing use of AI by paedophiles to create child sex abuse images. The UK’s Online Safety Bill, now the Online Safety Act aims to hold social media platforms more responsible for the content published on their platforms.
The Internet Watch Foundation have warned that AI-generated images of child sexual abuse were “threatening to overwhelm the internet”, with many now so realistic they were indistinguishable from real imagery – even to trained analysts.
According to new data released this week, an increase of children in schools across the UK are using AI to create indecent imagery of other children. Emma Hardy, leader of one of the UK’s leading child protection organisations ‘UK Safer Internet Centre’ (UKSIC) has said they have begun receiving reports from schools of their students’ creating images, many of which that are terrifyingly realistic.
UKSIC are pleading with schools across the UK to act urgently to put in place better blocking systems to prevent this from happening. They have suggested schools put into place better filtering and monitoring systems that can effectively block illegal material across their school devices to combat threat.
UKSIC commented:
‘Children may be making this imagery out of curiosity, sexual exploitation, or for a range of other reasons, but images can quickly get out of hand and children risk losing control of the material, which can circulate on the open web’.
