Child safety organisation Thorn published support for the Stop CSAM Act in late July 2026, citing staggering scale of abuse online. In 2025 alone, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children received over 21 million reports of suspected online child sexual exploitation, encompassing more than 61.8 million images, videos and related files. Thorn's 2025 research found that 1 in 6 (17%) young people personally knew someone who had been the victim, creator or sharer of a deepfake nude of a child. The proposed legislation seeks to hold platforms accountable and evolve child protection systems in line with emerging threats, particularly AI-generated CSAM.
The Stop CSAM Act exemplifies a legislative approach that attempts to shift liability upstream to platforms—but enforcement remains retrospective, reactive and complaint-driven. By the time a CyberTipline report is filed, reviewed, triaged to law enforcement and investigated, the child has already been exploited and the material has proliferated. Guardii's anti-CSAM detection module, trained to identify both photographic and AI-generated abuse material, operates at the point of transmission: it blocks the image in the direct message before it reaches the child, the peer group or the distribution network. For parents and schools managing real-time risk, point-of-contact interception—not post-hoc platform liability—is the operational necessity the Act does not provide.
