Reports of AI-Generated Child Sexual Abuse Material Surge to Over 400,000 in First Half of 2025

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reported that AI-generated child sexual abuse material surged from 4,700 reports in 2023 to more than 400,000 in the first half of 2025 alone, an average of over 2,000 reports per day. NCMEC executive director Fallon McNulty stated the organisation first began receiving such reports in 2023, with the figure jumping to 67,000 in 2024 before the dramatic increase in 2025. The FBI confirmed it has technology to determine whether media is AI-generated and can track its origin, and scammers are using AI-generated images of children in sextortion schemes, creating fake explicit images and threatening to release them unless victims or their parents pay thousands of dollars.

The Guardii anti-CSAM detection module, which includes specific capacity for AI-generated and deepfake material, identifies and blocks such content in real time before it reaches a target child or is shared further across Instagram, Discord, Roblox, Snapchat and other platforms. Guardii is a world-leading AI online-safety platform that detects the distribution of child sexual abuse material, whether photographed, AI-generated or deepfake, in direct-message conversations, enabling rapid escalation to the appropriate authority without requiring a human moderator to view the material itself. The module addresses the operational gap illustrated by the 400,000-report figure: detecting and intercepting CSAM at the point of transmission rather than relying solely on post-distribution takedown and forensic investigation.