How Emerging AI Technology Puts Children at Risk
By Movieguide® Contributor
AI is making it easier for child predators to threaten and abuse children while simultaneously making it harder for law enforcement to identify bad actors.
“The use of AI for child sexual abuse will make it harder for us to identify real children who need protecting and further normalize abuse,” Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA) Director General Graeme Biggar said in a recent speech. “And that matters because we assess that the viewing of these images—whether real or AI-generated—materially increases the risk of offenders moving on the sexually abusing children themselves.”
“There is also no doubt that our work is being made harder as major technology companies develop their services, including rolling out end-to-end encryption, in a way that they know will make it more difficult for law enforcement to detect and investigate crime and protect children,” he continued.
Using generative AI, sexual predators can now easily create hyper-realistic images and videos of child sexual abuse, which can be easily accessed and shared.
AI tools can also be used to edit images and manipulate photos to make them more sexual than originally meant to be.
“Malicious actors use content manipulation technologies and services to exploit photos and videos—typically captured from an individual’s social media account, open internet or requested form the victim—into sexually-themed images that appear true-to-life in likeness to a victim, then circulate them on social media, public forums or pornographic websites,” the FBI warned.
In response to the emerging technology, The Internet Watchdog Foundation (IWF) is calling for stronger online safeguards.
“Increasing online activity by offenders, described as the new ‘front line’ by the NCA means we cannot expect children to safely navigate the risks online on their own,” IWF CEO Susie Hargreaves said. “We need to ensure technological safeguards are in place to protect children.”
One area of major concern is the use of end-to-end encryption, a form of online privacy where messages can only ever be seen by the sender and the receiver, never by the company providing the service.
“Theoretically, that sounds fine,” IWF stated. “But without additional safeguards, there is no opportunity, even for the company providing the messaging platform, to spot and prevent criminal content such as child sexual abuse imagery from being shared.”
“There is a danger that if technology companies introduce end-to-end encryption on their platforms, it will make it even harder to identify and stop online predators,” Hargreaves added.
Movieguide® previously reported:
Bumble and TikTok joined Twitter and Facebook in an industry partnership to stop to spread of nonconsensual sexual or sexualized material. This includes sharing child sexual abuse, rape, sex trafficking, and prostitution as well as videos made by hidden cameras, deepfake images, or leaked photos.
“We are thankful that Bumble and TikTok are joining efforts led by StopNCII.org to confront the growing epidemic of image-based sexual abuse, which can victimize anyone in an instant and cause lifelong trauma,” Dawn Hawkins, CEO of the NCOSE said.
There are currently no federal laws that require companies to remove sexual material that was uploaded without consent. It is up to the company and its own policies as to whether they will remove this type of content, and oftentimes the victims of virtual sexual abuse are ignored when they ask to have their images removed.
“We are hopeful that when tech leaders work together, that image-based sexual abuse will be stopped. More must be done, and Congress should prioritize passing the PROTECT Act, which would ensure that federal law protects victims of image-based sexual abuse from websites monetizing and distributing their abuse,” Hawkins said.
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