Huge rise in AI child sexual abuse material

The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) has found that AI-generated child sexual abuse material is rapidly increasing online, with more images found in the first six months of this year than all of 2025.

The IWF is based in Cambridge and runs Europe’s largest hotline to find, assess, and stop child sexual abuse material (CSAM) around the world. Their analysts have found increasing numbers of photo-realistic images and videos of CSAM generated by artificial intelligence, including material depicting children as young as two years old. Girls feature in the vast majority (98%) of images, and increasing amounts of material feature younger children.

Between January and June this year, the IWF assessed over 6,000 AI-generated images which met the criteria for CSAM. This is 40% more than recorded in the whole of 2025, where around 4,500 images were assessed. During the first half of this year, analysts identified over 2,500 images of children aged seven to ten, around 2,300 images of children 11 to 13, over 1,000 of children aged three to sex-years-old, and 190 images of those under two.

Although AI-generated images might seem less harmful since it is computer-generated, it still causes real harm, report the IWF. “In some cases, offenders use AI tools to manipulate genuine images of victims, creating new abuse material that can further traumatise survivors,” they state.

The Internet Watch Foundation are calling on the EU to implement legislation to enable both known and unseen abuse material to be detected. The IWF uses digital ‘fingerprints’ called hashes to identify CSAM online. When material is flagged as criminal, a hash can be created and shared with police and tech companies to allow them to identify the material without sharing the original images. However, it can only identify existing CSAM as new illegal content has no hash before it has been identified. The IWF says that “a legal framework that focuses only on known material would leave the door open for offenders to rapidly create and spread high volumes of new AI material.”

IWF’s CEO, Kerry Smith, said: “It is deeply concerning to see how quickly AI-generated child sexual abuse imagery continues to grow and spread online. If Europe is serious about protecting children, it needs a comprehensive Child Sexual Abuse Regulation that gives platforms the legal certainty to detect, prevent and respond to known and unknown child sexual abuse content.”