🔗 Share this article

Technology companies and child safety organizations will be granted authority to assess whether AI systems can produce child abuse images under new British laws.

Significant Increase in AI-Generated Illegal Content

The announcement came as revelations from a safety watchdog showing that cases of AI-generated child sexual abuse material have increased dramatically in the past year, rising from 199 in 2024 to 426 in 2025.

New Regulatory Framework

Under the changes, the authorities will permit designated AI companies and child safety groups to examine AI systems – the foundational technology for chatbots and image generators – and ensure they have adequate safeguards to stop them from producing depictions of child sexual abuse.

"Fundamentally about stopping exploitation before it happens," declared the minister for AI and online safety, adding: "Experts, under rigorous conditions, can now detect the risk in AI systems early."

Tackling Legal Challenges

The changes have been introduced because it is against the law to produce and own CSAM, meaning that AI creators and others cannot generate such content as part of a evaluation process. Until now, officials had to wait until AI-generated CSAM was uploaded online before dealing with it.

This legislation is aimed at preventing that problem by enabling to halt the creation of those images at source.

Legal Framework

The changes are being added by the government as revisions to the crime and policing bill, which is also establishing a prohibition on owning, producing or distributing AI systems designed to generate child sexual abuse material.

Practical Impact

This recently, the official visited the London base of a children's helpline and heard a simulated conversation to counsellors involving a account of AI-based exploitation. The call portrayed a adolescent seeking help after facing extortion using a explicit AI-generated image of themselves, created using AI.

"When I hear about young people facing blackmail online, it is a cause of extreme frustration in me and rightful concern amongst families," he said.

Concerning Data

A leading internet monitoring foundation reported that cases of AI-generated exploitation content – such as online pages that may contain multiple images – had significantly increased so far this year.

Cases of the most severe content – the gravest form of abuse – increased from 2,621 images or videos to 3,086.

• Female children were overwhelmingly victimized, making up 94% of prohibited AI images in 2025
• Portrayals of newborns to two-year-olds rose from five in 2024 to 92 in 2025

Industry Response

The legislative amendment could "represent a crucial step to guarantee AI tools are secure before they are released," commented the head of the online safety organization.

"AI tools have made it so victims can be targeted repeatedly with just a simple actions, giving offenders the ability to create potentially limitless quantities of advanced, photorealistic exploitative content," she added. "Material which additionally exploits survivors' suffering, and makes young people, particularly girls, less safe on and off line."

Counseling Session Data

The children's helpline also released details of support interactions where AI has been mentioned. AI-related risks mentioned in the conversations include:

• Employing AI to evaluate body size, body and looks
• Chatbots dissuading children from talking to safe guardians about harm
• Being bullied online with AI-generated material
• Online blackmail using AI-faked images

Between April and September this year, Childline delivered 367 counselling sessions where AI, conversational AI and associated terms were discussed, four times as many as in the equivalent timeframe last year.

Fifty percent of the mentions of AI in the 2025 interactions were connected with mental health and wellbeing, encompassing using AI assistants for assistance and AI therapeutic applications.