Public warned vs AI-generated child abuse materials

A UK-based children’s charity has confirmed the sighting of AI-generated child sexual abuse images and warned the public about their dangers.

Of the 29 reports it investigated between May 24 and June 30, the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) confirmed seven URLs (uniform resource locators) containing AI-generated child sexual abuse and exploitation materials (CSAEM).

“We are not currently seeing these images in huge numbers, but it is clear to us the potential exists for criminals to produce unprecedented quantities of life-like child sexual abuse imagery. This would be potentially devastating for internet safety and for the safety of children online,” said Susie Hargreaves, chief executive of the IWF.

She said offenders are now using AI image generators ”to produce sometimes astoundingly realistic images of children suffering sexual abuse.”

In the Philippines, Angel Redoble, chief information security officer of PLDT and its wireless unit, Smart Communications, Inc., said the ”development not only poses a challenge to the technology side of counteracting OSAEC (online sexual abuse and exploitation of children), but it also tests the limits of our laws in addressing the menace.”

PLDT and Smart also urged child rights and child safety advocates to work together to come up with impactful anti-OSAEC programs that are adaptive to the rapidly changing environment.

”IWF regularly provides ‘hashes’ to the PLDT Group which it blocks in real time. PLDT and Smart’s blocking tool houses a massive vault of OSAEC-related URLs contains more than 660,000 links that have been blocked from the PLDT and Smart network, preventing customers from accessing them,” the company said.

”In the first half of the year their Cyber Security Operations Group (CSOG) managed to block more than a million attempts to open sites that host child sexual abuse imagery.”