Australian eSafety Commissioner reports 400 percent increase in reports of AI-generated intimate imagery targeting minors

Australia's eSafety Commissioner released figures on November 1, 2026, showing a 400 percent year-on-year increase in reports of AI-generated intimate imagery targeting children and teenagers, with the majority of cases involving deepfake nude images created from clothed photos taken from school social media accounts and shared within peer groups or used in sextortion campaigns. The report noted that commercially available nudification applications and open-source generative models have made the creation of non-consensual intimate imagery trivial, and that existing image-based abuse provisions in the Online Safety Act are being applied to AI-manipulated content, though enforcement remains reactive and dependent on victim or bystander reporting.

Because deepfake sextortion and image-based abuse unfold in direct messages rather than public posts, detection at the point of contact is essential. Guardii's sextortion and AI-CSAM filters analyse the threatening or coercive language, the image-solicitation sequence and the distribution pattern within a messaging thread, flagging the incident in real time and enabling a parent, school or law-enforcement partner to intervene before the synthetic imagery is weaponised or further disseminated. Backed by Startmate and operating as a Meta Business Partner, Guardii provides the immediate detection layer that turns the eSafety Commissioner's reactive reporting pipeline into an interception capability.