Legal fight against AI-generated child pornography is complicated A legal scholar explains why

Tlhako urged parents to monitor their children’s phone usage, and the social media platforms they are using. JOHANNESBURG – A massive amount of child sexual abuse material is traded on the dark web, a hidden part of the internet that cannot be accessed through regular browsers. Some people accidentally find sexual images of children and are curious or aroused by them. They may justify their behavior by saying they weren’t looking for the pictures, they just “stumbled across” them, etc. Of the 2,401 ‘self-generated’ images and videos of 3–6-year-olds that we hashed this year, 91% were of girls and most (62%) were assessed as Category C by our analysts. These images showed children in sexual poses, displaying their genitals to the camera.

Judge invalidates warrant that let feds hack Tor-using child porn suspect

• A youth may then become more secretive about their digital media use, and they therefore may not reach out when something concerning or harmful happens.
• BBC News has found that creators can share content and then arrange payments through alternative providers, in violation of company guidelines.
• In the backgrounds, analysts saw soft toys, games, books and bedding featuring cartoon characters.
• Those in their 20s accounted for 22.6 percent of the offenders, followed by 15.0 percent in their 30s and 11.1 percent in their 40s.
• The social media platform has grown nearly 10-fold since 2019, and now has more than 120 million users.
• “The website monetized the sexual abuse of children and was one of the first to offer sickening videos for sale using the cryptocurrency bitcoin,” the NCA said in a statement.

The Justice Department says existing federal laws clearly apply to such content, and recently brought what’s believed to be the first federal case involving purely AI-generated imagery — meaning the children depicted are not real but virtual. In another case, federal authorities in August arrested a U.S. soldier stationed in Alaska accused of running innocent pictures of real children he knew through an AI chatbot to make the images sexually explicit. Law enforcement agencies across the U.S. are cracking down on a troubling spread of child sexual abuse imagery created through artificial intelligence technology — from manipulated photos of real children to graphic depictions of computer-generated kids. Justice Department officials say they’re aggressively going after offenders who exploit AI tools, while states are racing to ensure people generating “deepfakes” and other harmful imagery of kids can be prosecuted under their laws. With the recent significant advances in AI, it can be difficult if not impossible for law enforcement officials to distinguish between images of real and fake children. Lawmakers, meanwhile, are passing a flurry of legislation to ensure local prosecutors can bring charges under state laws for AI-generated “deepfakes” and other sexually explicit images of kids.

Top technology companies, including Google, OpenAI and Stability AI, have agreed to work with anti-child sexual abuse organization Thorn to combat the spread of child sexual abuse images. The court’s decisions in Ferber and Ashcroft could be used to argue that any AI-generated sexually explicit image of real minors should not be protected as free speech given the psychological harms inflicted on the real minors. The court’s ruling in Ashcroft may permit AI-generated sexually explicit images of fake minors. The city of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was shaken by revelations in December 2023 that two local teenage boys shared hundreds of nude images of girls in their community over a private chat on the social chat platform Discord. Witnesses said the photos easily could have been mistaken for real ones, but they were fake.

Those numbers may be an undercount, however, as the images are so realistic it’s often difficult to tell whether they were AI-generated, experts say. But experts say more should have been done at the outset to prevent misuse before the technology child porn became widely available. And steps companies are taking now to make it harder to abuse future versions of AI tools “will do little to prevent” offenders from running older versions of models on their computer “without detection,” a Justice Department prosecutor noted in recent court papers. According to Aichi prefectural police, online porn video marketplaces operated on servers abroad are difficult to regulate or find facts about.

UK and US raid “dark web” of child pornography: 337 arrests in 38 countries

If you find what you believe to be sexual images of children on the internet, report this immediately to authorities by contacting Cybertipline. If you or someone you know is concerned about their internet activity, seek the help of professionals who specialize in this area. Unlike physical abuse which leaves visible scars, the digital nature of child sexual abuse material means victims are constantly re-traumatised every time their content is seen. Once inside, they can find vast criminals networks, including those peddling child sexual abuse material on a massive scale, Mistri adds.

Ex-Chief Justice DY Chandrachud joins Law University as Distinguished Professor

Hertfordshire Police told us that a 14-year-old girl had managed to use her grandmother’s passport and bank details to sell explicit images. Leah’s age was directly reported to OnlyFans by an anonymous social media account in late January. The company says this led to a moderator reviewing the account and double-checking her ID. She told her mum she originally intended to only post pictures of her feet after making money selling them on Snapchat. But this soon escalated to explicit videos of her masturbating and playing with sex toys. But BBC News has also heard from child protection experts across the UK and US, spoken to dozens of police forces and schools, and obtained anonymised extracts from Childline counsellor notes, about underage experiences on OnlyFans.