Australian eSafety Commissioner reports 400% increase in image-based abuse reports targeting children under 16

The Australian eSafety Commissioner released data showing that image-based abuse reports involving children under 16 rose by 400 percent between January 2025 and August 2026, with AI-generated deepfakes and nudification apps accounting for 63 percent of cases reported in the most recent quarter. The Commissioner noted that the majority of incidents originated within school peer groups and involved the non-consensual manipulation of images taken from Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok, with perpetrators often using the manipulated material to coerce victims into providing additional content or to humiliate them within closed messaging groups.

Targeted detection at the point where coercion and distribution occur addresses the threat the data reveals. Guardii's sextortion and cyberbullying detection modules, operating in real time across the direct-message layer of Instagram, Snapchat, Discord, Roblox and other platforms, identify the distinctive patterns of sustained targeting, escalation and image-based coercion before material is shared or demands intensify, intercepting the exchange and surfacing a child in crisis to a parent, school safeguarding lead or professional without requiring the child to self-report or an adult to monitor every conversation, and providing the evidence base authorities need to act swiftly when criminal conduct is identified.