EncroChat and Europol logos are seen in this illustration taken, June 27, 2023.
REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
Europol, Europe’s policing agency, said it’s seen a marked increase in AI-generated child sexual abuse material, aka CSAM. And they predicted it’ll get worse: “The use of AI which allows child sex offenders to generate or alter child sex abuse material is set to further proliferate in the near future," the agency said in a statement. The technology also makes it easier for perpetrators to cyberbully and sexually extort victims for financial gain.
In a new report, Europol warns of the dangers of deepfake child abuse material. But it also says that the advent of AI makes it difficult to detect what’s real and what’s fake. And AI-generated images could be trained on real CSAM. Massive AI training datasets have been found to include numerous instances of CSAM.