AI-generated CSAM on the rise, IWF says
In the first half of the year, a total of 1,286 AI-generated videos showing child sexual abuse material (CSAM) have surfaced online, the Internet Watch Foundation says.
According to the watchdog, AI-generated videos of child abuse have crossed the threshold of being nearly indistinguishable from real imagery.
In the first six months of 2025, the Internet Watch Foundation identified 1,286 videos with CSAM that broke the law. For comparison, the UK-based online safety organization found only two such videos in the same period last year.
In the first half of the year, the Foundation received 210 reports of AI-made CSAM. Each report featured hundreds of images showing child abuse.
The IWF said just over 1,000 of these videos have been labeled Category A, which present a depiction of the most severe forms of child sexual abuse, including penetrative sexual activity, rape, bestiality, and sadism.
“It is a very competitive industry. Lots of money is going into it, so unfortunately there is a lot of choice for perpetrators,” an IWF analyst told The Guardian.
The IWF came across a post on the dark web 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 that these images and videos have been created using free AI models and ‘fine tuning’ it with CSAM to make realistic videos.
“There is an incredible risk of AI-generated CSAM leading to an absolute explosion that overwhelms the clear web,” Derek Ray-Hill, Interim Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at the IWF, said about the growth in capability of AI models, adding that an increase in such content could fuel criminal activity.
According to IWF’s Annual Data & Insights Report 2024, every 108 seconds a child is being sexually abused.
In 2024, the foundation discovered a record-breaking 291,273 images and videos of child sexual abuse. More than half (62%) of web pages that hosted these photos and videos could be traced back to hosting services located in member states of the EU.
“The EU cannot become a safe haven for perpetrators to freely abuse children and exchange criminal content,” Derek Ray-Hill said in a statement at the time.