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Internet Watch Foundation reports huge rise in AI child sexual abuse material
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The Internet Watch Foundation has reported a sharp rise in AI-generated child sexual abuse material, with the amount of illegal imagery investigated in the first half of 2026 already surpassing the total for the whole of 2025. Analysts at the UK-based organisation, which monitors abuse material globally, assessed 6,310 AI-generated images meeting the legal definition of child sexual abuse. That figure is 40% higher than last year's total of more than 4,500.
Instances of AI-made child sexual abuse material have been climbing for several years, with a particularly large surge in videos, although the latest IWF figures cover still images only. The majority of the images examined by analysts depicted girls, and most showed children aged between seven and 13. The IWF said the findings underlined the urgent need for new statutory regulation of artificial intelligence.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham's government has not signalled that a bill focused on the technology is imminent. AI minister Kanishka Narayan has said "nothing is off the table" in terms of fresh regulation, adding that the test for any legislative proposal will be: "Will it make the British people safer?"
Hannah Swirsky, the IWF's head of policy, backed calls from parliamentarians for "binding legislation on AI" that would compel companies to build safer models. "It is incumbent on tech companies to build tools which cannot be abused this way," she said, arguing the problem was created by technology and must be solved at the design stage.
AI-generated child sexual abuse material is already illegal in the UK, as is adapting an AI model to produce such imagery or distributing those models to others. Developing a model designed to generate hyper-realistic abuse material carries a criminal sentence of up to five years.
A government spokesperson said UK law is clear that such material is illegal "regardless of whether it is AI-generated or not," and that ministers are going further by banning AI models used to create it. The Report Remove service, which blocks intimate images online, has received 420 reports from children about faked or manipulated pictures of themselves, exceeding its 2025 total of 397.
The National Crime Agency and the IWF have urged parents and guardians to keep photographs of children off social media, make accounts private, or share images only through a "close friends" group.
