The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) has called on the prime minister to prioritise the threat of AI-generated child sexual abuse after it found “astoundingly realistic” images of children online.

Across a five-week period, the organisation investigated 29 reports of URLs that contained suspected AI-generated child sexual abuse imagery, finding five sites that did contain this type of content.

It said that some examples were so realistic that they would be indistinguishable from real imagery to most people.

Analysts at the IWF also discovered an online manual designed to help offenders refine their prompts and train AI to return increasingly realistic results.

The charity said that AI companies and politicians need to to do more to prevent the abuse of AI tools and protect users from the spread of AI-generated child sexual abuse imagery.

The pages removed by the IWF included Category A – the most extreme type of content – and Category B material, with children as young as three to six years old.

“AI is getting more sophisticated all the time,” said Susie Hargreaves, chief executive of IWF. “We are sounding the alarm and saying the Prime Minister needs to treat the serious threat it poses as the top priority when he hosts the first global AI summit later this year.”

Hargreaves said that while the organisation is not seeing these images in huge numbers, it is clear that the potential exists for criminals to produce "unprecedented quantities of life-like child sexual abuse imagery".

The chief executive said that there is a chance to get ahead of this emerging technology but that legislation needs to take this into account.

“AI systems, as they become more widely used, will potentially make it easier for abusers to commit a range of child sexual abuse offences," added Chris Farrimond, director of threat leadership at the National Crime Agency.

He warned that if the volume of AI-generated material increases, this could greatly impact on law enforcement resources, increasing the time it takes for the agency identify real children in need of protection.

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