Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency, arrested 24 people across 19 countries last Wednesday in a global crackdown on AI-generated child pornography. The arrests stretched beyond the EU with suspects taken into custody in Australia, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand in coordination with local police.
The crackdown is part of a campaign called Operation Cumberland, which began in November with the arrest of a lead suspect in Denmark. The ringleader allegedly ran a website where people paid to access images of children that he created with help from artificial intelligence. Europol wrote in a press release that there are 273 total suspects, and they’ve done 33 house searches and seized 173 electronic devices.
“Operation Cumberland has been one of the first cases involving AI-generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM), making it exceptionally challenging for investigators, especially due to the lack of national legislation addressing these crimes,” Europol wrote in a statement.
The agency noted that EU member states are currently discussing regulations specifically addressing this type of content, so it’s unclear what the exact legal basis for the arrests is. (Europol did not respond to a request for comment by press time.) Nick Reiners, a senior geo-technology analyst at Eurasia Group, said he believes the legal basis would be national laws that do not distinguish CSAM from AI-generated CSAM. That said, there’s good reason for a new EU law: “The objective of the proposed new Directive is primarily to harmonize, update and strengthen national laws across EU member states, in part to make it easier to prosecute,” Reiners added.
The agency has said that more arrests are on the way in the coming weeks.