EU Parliament leads the way in tackling AI-generated child sexual abuse material
Guardii Analysis
The Internet Watch Foundation reported that in 2024 it confirmed 245 reports of AI-generated child sexual abuse material, representing a 380 percent increase from 2023, containing 7,644 images and videos. Nearly 40 percent of this AI-generated material depicted Category A abuse, the most severe classification under UK law, compared to 21 percent across all CSAM assessed by IWF in 2024. The report accompanied EU Parliament debate on closing loopholes in proposed child sexual abuse legislation, with IWF advocating for criminalisation of AI-generated CSAM in all circumstances without exemptions for personal use.
The 380 percent year-on-year increase in AI-generated CSAM and its concentration in the most severe abuse categories demonstrates that generative models are not producing lower-harm content but replicating and scaling the worst exploitation. Guardii's anti-CSAM detection module, which identifies child sexual abuse material including AI-generated and deepfake imagery, stops this content at the point of contact, blocking its transmission to a child or its distribution through direct messages before it enters circulation. Because the module detects CSAM by pattern and characteristics rather than by matching known image hashes, it identifies novel AI-generated material that has never been reported or catalogued, addressing the IWF finding that synthetic CSAM is becoming indistinguishable from photographic abuse and evading traditional hash-based detection systems.