A Growing Crisis: AI Deepfakes Targeting Children

A new report has highlighted a worrying trend in the United Kingdom: a sharp increase in the number of children reporting explicit deepfake images of themselves. A deepfake is a digital image or video that has been changed by artificial intelligence to make it look real, even though it is fake. According to The Guardian, the Report Remove service, which helps take down intimate images from the internet, has already received 420 reports from children in the first six months of this year. This number is already higher than the total for the entire year of 2025.

This update follows previous warnings about the dangers of AI-generated content. Dan Sexton, a technology expert at the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), explained that these tools have become very easy for people to use. He noted that the situation is difficult to control because anyone can take a normal photo of a child from the internet and turn it into something harmful. The IWF works with the charity NSPCC to help children remove these images. Because of the high number of reports, they have even added a special button on their website so children can quickly flag images as deepfakes.

Experts are particularly concerned about how these images are being used. Some victims have been targeted for sextortion, which is a type of crime where a blackmailer threatens to share private or fake images unless the victim pays money or sends more photos. The IWF reported that most of the images flagged this year were so severe that they were classified as child sexual abuse material, or CSAM. In the UK, it is illegal to use AI to create this kind of material, and the government has introduced laws to stop people from sharing or creating these dangerous AI models.

There is a clear disagreement between how quickly AI technology is growing and how well companies are protecting users. Rani Govender, an online safety expert at the NSPCC, stated that tech companies are responsible for this problem. She argued that these companies cannot keep releasing new AI products without including strong safety features that prevent people from creating harmful content in the first place. She called the rise in these reports both alarming and predictable, given how easily accessible these tools have become.

To fight this, services like Report Remove use a process called "hashing." This turns an image into a unique digital fingerprint. Once this fingerprint is shared with major tech platforms, they can find the image and remove it, or stop it from being uploaded again. However, experts agree that removing images is only part of the solution. The National Crime Agency and the IWF have recently encouraged parents and guardians to be much more careful about the photos they share of their children on social media. They suggest that limiting the number of pictures posted online is one of the few ways to stop these images from being stolen and manipulated.

Looking ahead, the challenge remains significant. As AI tools become more powerful, the risk to children continues to grow. The IWF has warned that everyone is potentially at risk, and the ability to stop these images from being created is limited once a photo is public. The focus is now shifting toward demanding that tech companies take more responsibility for the safety of their products. Until then, parents, schools, and safety organizations are working together to educate children about the risks and to provide support for those who have already been targeted by these digital crimes.