AI tools have put child sexual abuse ‘on steroids’, Home Secretary warns
The Home Office said fake images are being used to blackmail children and force them to livestream further abuse.
2 February 2025
IWF In The News
'Deeply disturbing': Children being tricked into sharing explicit images as 'sextortion' cases soar
Published: Mon 18 Sep 2023
Reports of children falling victim to a form of online sexual extortion have soared this year, a charity has warned.
The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) said it had received an "unprecedented" 191 reports of "sextortion" in the first half of this year, compared to 30 reports across the whole of last year.
The number of reports that saw action taken rose by 257% in the same period - and at least 6% of that content involved the most serious Category A images, the IWF said.
Sextortion is a form of blackmail in which a child is tricked into sending sexual images of themselves to abusers, who then threaten to share the pictures with friends, family or more widely on the internet if they are not paid money.
Read the full article at Sky News.
