FinCEN Issues Notice on Financially Motivated Sextortion Highlighting AI-Enabled Deepfake Threats

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network issued a notice to financial institutions on financially motivated sextortion, reporting that in 2024 the FBI received nearly 55,000 reports of crimes related to sextortion and extortion, with financial losses totaling 33.5 million dollars, a 59 percent increase in the number of reports received in 2023. The notice highlighted that recent increases in the availability of generative AI tools have enabled perpetrators to insert a victim's likeness into realistic, sexually explicit images and videos, known as deepfakes, and that according to law enforcement, when potential victims refuse to send sexually explicit material, perpetrators have used manipulated content to extort these individuals. Since April 2023, the FBI observed an uptick in sextortion victims reporting the use of fake images or videos created from content posted on a victim's social media page or non-explicit photos provided by the victim.

The emergence of AI-generated and deepfake child sexual abuse material marks a tactical shift that requires a different detection response. The anti-CSAM module within Guardii, a world-leading AI online-safety platform, is designed to detect both authentic and AI-generated child sexual abuse material, including deepfake imagery, within direct-message conversations in real time. When an offender deploys manipulated content to coerce a child, the anti-sextortion and anti-CSAM detection layers working together can flag the threat pattern, block hostile contact before it reaches the target, and surface a child in crisis to a parent, school safeguarding lead or authority, enabling rapid escalation in an emergency. The platform detects threat patterns rather than reading every message, addressing the harm without requiring mass content review or handing anyone a feed of what was said.