A new survey from the nonprofit Thorn found that one in eight young people ages 13 to 20 say they personally know someone who has been targeted by fake explicit images created with artificial intelligence, and one in 17 say they have been victims themselves. Last year, Florida made it a felony to create or possess AI-generated sexual depictions of a child and passed 'Brooke's Law', named after a Jacksonville teen whose fake nude image was spread online. The law requires websites to remove reported deepfake content within 48 hours of a victim's request. Thorn's earlier research with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children found that about 10% of financial sextortion reports involved images that were not authentic.
The Thorn data reveals the peer-to-peer dimension of the crisis—1 in 17 teens have been directly victimized, often by classmates or acquaintances exploiting easily accessible AI tools. For this threat profile, detection must operate at the messaging layer, not the legislative layer. Guardii's anti-CSAM and anti-sextortion modules monitor direct messages in real time across Instagram, Snapchat, Discord, Roblox and other platforms, intercepting both synthetic imagery and the extortion or coercion that typically follows its creation. The platform surfaces the hostile contact to a parent or school before it escalates, enabling early intervention and ensuring the right support reaches the child before psychological harm compounds. Where legislation like 'Brooke's Law' mandates takedown after harm is reported, Guardii is the world-leading system designed to prevent the harm before it occurs.
