The “worst nightmares” about artificial intelligence-generated child sexual abuse images are coming true and threaten to overwhelm the internet, a safety watchdog has warned. The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) said it had found nearly 3,000 AI-made abuse images that broke UK law. The UK-based organisation said existing images of real-life abuse victims were being built into AI models, which then produce new depictions of them. It added that the technology was also being used to create images of celebrities who have been “de-aged” and then depicted as children in sexual abuse scenarios. Other examples of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) included using AI tools to “nudify” pictures of clothed children found online. The IWF had warned in the summer that evidence of AI-made abuse was starting to emerge but said its latest report had shown an acceleration in use of the technology. Susie Hargreaves, the chief executive of the IWF, said the watchdog’s “worst nightmares have come true”. “Earlier this year, we warned AI imagery could soon become indistinguishable from real pictures of children suffering sexual abuse, and that we could start to see this imagery proliferating in much greater numbers. We have now passed that point,” she said. “Chillingly, we are seeing criminals deliberately training their AI on real victims’ images who have already suffered abuse. Children who have been raped in the past are now being incorporated into new scenarios because someone, somewhere, wants to see it.”
Full story : AI-created child sexual abuse images ‘threaten to overwhelm internet.’
