The Growing Danger of AI Deepfakes Targeting Children in the UK

A worrying new trend is affecting young people across the United Kingdom. According to The Guardian, there has been a sharp increase in the number of children reporting that they have seen fake, explicit images of themselves online. These images are created using advanced artificial intelligence (AI) technology, which can take a normal photo of a person and change it to look like something else. This process is often called a 'deepfake.'

Data from the Report Remove service, which helps remove private images from the internet, shows how fast this problem is growing. In the first six months of this year alone, the service received 420 reports from children who believed their photos had been changed to look explicit. This number is already higher than the total number of reports received in all of 2025, which was 397. Because of this rise, the service has added a special checkbox to its website so that children can easily report when they believe a deepfake has been made of them.

Dan Sexton, the chief technology officer at the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), explained that these figures show how hard it is to stop the spread of fake images today. The IWF works with the NSPCC, a charity that focuses on protecting children, to manage the Report Remove service. Sexton noted that the technology to create these images is now widely available to the public. He warned that if someone can take a normal picture of a child from the internet and turn it into harmful material, there is very little a child can do to stop it, other than avoiding posting photos online at all.

This issue is not just about fake photos; it is also about safety and the law. The IWF monitors the spread of child sexual abuse material, or CSAM, which is illegal content that harms children. According to the IWF, most of the reports they received in 2025 and 2026 were so serious that they were classified as CSAM. In the UK, it is against the law to use AI models to create this kind of abuse material or to share such models with others. However, the ease of using these tools makes it difficult for authorities to keep up.

Some victims are facing even worse situations. Sexton reported that some children who contacted the service had been targeted for 'sextortion.' This is a type of crime where a blackmailer threatens to share private or fake images of a person unless they pay money or provide even more explicit pictures. This creates a dangerous cycle where the victim is trapped by the threat of their reputation being ruined.

Experts are now calling on technology companies to take more responsibility. Rani Govender, an online safety expert at the NSPCC, stated that the rise in these reports is both alarming and predictable. She argued that tech companies cannot continue to release new AI products without including strong safety protections. These protections should be designed to stop the creation of harmful material before it ever happens. Govender believes that the industry must prioritize the safety of children over the speed of releasing new technology.

To help fight this problem, the Report Remove service uses a special system. When a child reports an image, the service turns it into a 'hash,' which is like a unique digital fingerprint. This fingerprint is then shared with major technology platforms. If the platforms have this information, they can automatically find and remove the image or stop it from being uploaded again. This helps prevent the images from spreading across the internet.

As the situation continues to develop, the National Crime Agency and the IWF have started to encourage parents and guardians to think carefully about the photos they share of their children online. While technology offers many benefits, the risk of these images being stolen and changed by AI is a serious concern. The message from experts is clear: the digital world is changing, and everyone must be more aware of how their online presence can be used against them. Until tech companies provide better safety tools, the responsibility to protect young people remains a shared challenge for families, schools, and the government.