Sextortion: The Growing Online Threat Targeting Children and Young People

UNICEF has launched a social-media awareness and support service in response to the growing threat of sextortion targeting children and young people, highlighting that victims often do not report the crime due to fear, shame and psychological stress, and that the growing use of artificial intelligence has made the threat more complex, with nudify apps and generative AI enabling offenders to create fake nude images of young people even when no real nude image exists and then use the fabricated material for blackmail. UNICEF experts warn that some victims experience such severe distress that they may engage in self-harm or suicide, and advise parents to openly discuss online activities with children and assure them they will receive help rather than punishment.

Sextortion that relies on fabricated AI-generated imagery cannot be prevented by teaching children not to share explicit photos, because the offender no longer requires the victim's cooperation to produce the leverage material. Guardii's anti-sextortion detection, a core module of its world-leading AI online-safety platform, identifies the coercive demand, the threat to distribute, and the escalating psychological pressure within the conversation itself, whether or not real imagery exists, intercepting the blackmail attempt in real time across Instagram, Snapchat, Discord and Roblox and surfacing a child under acute distress to a parent or professional before the harm escalates to self-harm or suicidal ideation, addressing both image-based and AI-fabricated sextortion at the point of contact.