AI-generated child sexual abuse videos surging online, watchdog says
The Internet Watch Foundation said AI videos of abuse had 'crossed the threshold' of being near-indistinguishable from 'real imagery' and had sharply increased in prevalence online this year.
In the first six months of 2025, the UK-based internet safety watchdog verified 1,286 AI-made videos with child sexual abuse material (CSAM) that broke the law, compared with two in the same period last year.
The IWF said just over 1,000 of the videos featured category A abuse, the classification for the most severe type of material.
The organisation said the multibillion-dollar investment spree in AI was producing widely available video-generation models that were being manipulated by paedophiles.
'It is a very competitive industry. Lots of money is going into it, so unfortunately there is a lot of choice for perpetrators,' said one IWF analyst.
The videos were found as part of a 400% increase in URLs featuring AI-made child sexual abuse in the first six months of 2025. The IWF received reports of 210 such URLs, compared with 42 last year, with each webpage featuring hundreds of images, including the surge in video content.
The IWF saw one post on a dark web forum where a paedophile referred to the speed of improvements in AI, saying how they had mastered one AI tool only for 'something new and better to come along'.
IWF analysts said the images appeared to have been created by taking a freely available basic AI model and 'fine-tuning' it with CSAM in order to produce realistic videos. In some cases these models had been fine-tuned with a handful of CSAM videos, the IWF said.
The most realistic AI abuse videos seen this year were based on real-life victims, the watchdog said.
Derek Ray-Hill, the IWF's interim chief executive, said the growth in capability of AI models, their wide availability and the ability to adapt them for criminal purposes could lead to an explosion of AI-made CSAM online.
'There is an incredible risk of AI-generated CSAM leading to an absolute explosion that overwhelms the clear web,' he said, adding that a growth in such content could fuel criminal activity linked to child trafficking, child sexual abuse and modern slavery.
The use of existing victims of sexual abuse in AI-generated images meant that paedophiles were significantly expanding the volume of CSAM online without having to rely on new victims, he added.
The UK government is cracking down on AI-generated CSAM by making it illegal to possess, create or distribute AI tools designed to create abuse content. People found to have breached the new law will face up to five years in jail.
Ministers are also outlawing possession of manuals that teach potential offenders how to use AI tools to either make abusive imagery or to help them abuse children. Offenders could face a prison sentence of up to three years.
Announcing the changes in February, the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, said it was vital that 'we tackle child sexual abuse online as well as offline'.
AI-generated CSAM is illegal under the Protection of Children Act 1978, which criminalises the taking, distribution and possession of an 'indecent photograph or pseudo photograph' of a child.
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