Published : 05 Oct 2026, 07:32 PM
Updated : 05 Oct 2026, 07:32 PM
The volume of AI-generated child sexual abuse material investigated so far this year has already surpassed the total for all of 2025, a leading watchdog says.
The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), a UK-based organisation that monitors abuse material globally, says it assessed 6,310 AI-generated images meeting the legal definition of child sexual abuse in the first half of 2026 -- 40 percent more than the roughly 4,500 flagged across the whole of last year.
The Guardian says the material depicted children aged between seven and 13, with most of them being girls.
The figures come as the watchdog renews calls for binding legislation compelling technology companies to build AI systems that cannot be used to produce such content.
"It is incumbent on tech companies to build tools which cannot be abused this way," said Hannah Swirsky, the IWF's head of policy.
The UK government has made it illegal to adapt or distribute AI models designed to generate abuse material, with penalties of up to five years in prison for creating hyper-realistic imagery -- but campaigners say that is not enough, reports The Guardian.
Children have also been affected directly. The Report Remove service, which works to block explicit images from circulating online, has already received more reports from children about faked or manipulated images of themselves in 2026 than it did in all of 2025.
Authorities have urged parents to keep images of children off social media or to restrict sharing to private groups.
