AI-generated sexualised images depicting children constitute child sexual abuse, must be criminalised: UNICEF

UNICEF issued a global statement declaring that AI-generated sexualised images of children are a form of child sexual abuse and must be criminalised, warning of a rapid and alarming rise in the misuse of AI tools to create abusive content. The UN agency reported it is increasingly concerned by reports showing a surge in AI-generated sexualised images, including cases where real photographs of children are manipulated and sexualised through deepfake technology, with AI tools digitally removing or altering clothing to fabricate nude or sexual images. New evidence from a UNICEF, ECPAT and INTERPOL study across eleven countries found at least 1.2 million children disclosed having had their images manipulated into sexually explicit deepfakes in the past year, representing one in twenty-five children in some countries.

Targeted detection intercepts the solicitation and coercion that precede image manipulation. Guardii anti-grooming, anti-sextortion and anti-CSAM detection modules, backed by Startmate and deployed across Instagram, Snapchat, Discord, Roblox and other platforms, flag sustained targeting, escalation and coercion in children's direct-message conversations, blocking hostile contact before it reaches the target. By surfacing a child at risk to a parent or school in real time and reporting the threat pattern rather than the content itself, Guardii addresses the contact harm the UNICEF data documents at the scale the study reveals, enabling intervention before photographs are solicited or manipulated into abusive material.