Home Office targets the use of Artificial Intelligence in Child Sexual Abuse

Artificial Intelligence (AI) generated software is reportedly being widely used online to create images of child sexual abuse, with the software swapping the AI generated faces for real faces and adding in real life voices, to target and blackmail children, teenagers and survivors of abuse.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper commented on the BBC’s programme ‘Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg’ that “What we’re seeing is that AI is now putting the online child abuse on steroids… You have perpetrators who are using AI to help them better groom or blackmail teenagers and children, distorting images and using those to draw young people into further abuse, just the most horrific things taking place and also becoming more sadistic.”

The Home Office has therefore announced that the UK will lead the way in making it illegal to create, possess or distribute AI tools that are designed to create child sexual abuse images.  This offence will be punishable by up to 5 years in prison.

Anyone caught in possession of AI paedophile manuals, which explain how to use AI for sexual abuse, would be punishable by up to 3 years in prison.

A new law will also be introduced, which will make it an offence to run websites that make it possible for paedophiles to provide advice on how to groom children or share child sexual abuse, which would be punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

In addition, when someone is entering into the UK, if the Border Force suspects the individual may pose a sexual risk to children, the Border Force will be given powers to instruct those individuals to unlock their digital devices for inspection.

According to the National Crime Agency, there are around 800 arrests each month relating to threats posed to children online.

The latest data from the Internet Watch Foundation, confirmed in 2023 there were 51 reports of child sexual abuse material being generated by using AI, which has risen to 245 reports in 2024, with each report containing thousands of images.

Cooper commented  further that AI was “industrialising the scale” of sexual abuse against children and that the government measures “may have to go further”.

What is certainly apparent is the legislation must keep up with advances in technology and the social media and tech companies must also take action to introduce stronger safeguards to ensure their platforms are safe for children.

The above measures will be introduced to parliament over the next few weeks as part of the Crime and Policing Bill.