OpenAI's Child Exploitation Reports Increased Sharply This Year The company made 80 times as many reports to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children during the first six months of 2025 as it did in the same period a year prior. OpenAI sent 80 times as many child exploitation incident reports to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children during the first half of 2025 as it did during a similar time period in 2024, according to a recent update from the company. The NCMEC's CyberTipline is a Congressionally authorized clearinghouse for reporting child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and other forms of child exploitation. Companies are required by law to report apparent child exploitation to the CyberTipline. When a company sends a report, NCMEC reviews it and then forwards it to the appropriate law enforcement agency for investigation.

Apple is failing to effectively monitor its platforms or scan for images and videos of the sexual abuse of children, child safety experts allege, which is raising concerns about how the company can handle growth in the volume of such material associated with artificial intelligence. The UK's National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) accuses Apple of vastly undercounting how often child sexual abuse material (CSAM) appears in its products. In a year, child predators used Apple's iCloud, iMessage and Facetime to store and exchange CSAM in a higher number of cases in England and Wales alone than the company reported across all other countries combined, according to police data obtained by the NSPCC. Through data gathered via freedom of information requests and shared exclusively with the Guardian, the children's charity found Apple was implicated in 337 recorded offenses of child abuse images between April 2022 and March 2023 in England and Wales. In 2023, Apple made just 267 reports of suspected CSAM on its platforms worldwide to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), which is in stark contrast to its big tech peers, with Google reporting more than 1.47m and Meta reporting more than 30.6m, per NCMEC's annual report.

The volume of sexually explicit images of children being generated by predators using artificial intelligence is overwhelming law enforcement's capabilities to identify and rescue real-life victims, child safety experts warn. Prosecutors and child safety groups working to combat crimes against children say AI-generated images have become so lifelike that in some cases it is difficult to determine whether real children have been subjected to real harms for their production. A single AI model can generate tens of thousands of new images in a short amount of time, and this content has begun to flood both the dark web and seep into the mainstream internet. "We are starting to see reports of images that are of a real child but have been AI-generated, but that child was not sexually abused. But now their face is on a child that was abused," said Kristina Korobov, senior attorney at the Zero Abuse Project, a Minnesota-based child safety non-profit.

The FBI has charged a US man with creating more than 10,000 sexually explicit and abusive images of children, which he allegedly generated using a popular artificial intelligence tool. Authorities also accused the man, 42-year-old Steven Anderegg, of sending pornographic AI-made images to a 15-year-old boy over Instagram. Anderegg crafted about 13,000 "hyper-realistic images of nude and semi-clothed prepubescent children", prosecutors stated in an indictment released on Monday, often images depicting children touching their genitals or being sexually abused by adult men. Evidence from the Wisconsin man's laptop allegedly showed he used the popular Stable Diffusion AI model, which turns text descriptions into images. Anderegg's charges came after the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) received two reports last year that flagged his Instagram account, which prompted law enforcement officials to monitor his activity on the social network, obtain information from Instagram and eventually obtain a search warrant.

Child sexual exploitation is on the rise online and taking new forms such as images and videos generated by artificial intelligence, according to an annual assessment released on Tuesday by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), a US-based clearinghouse for the reporting of child sexual abuse material. Reports to the NCMEC of child abuse online rose by more than 12% in 2023 compared with the previous year, surpassing 36.2m The majority of tips received were related to the circulation of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) such as photos and videos, but there was also an increase in reports of financial sexual extortion, when an online predator lures a child into sending nude images or videos and then demands money. Some children and families were extorted for financial gain by predators using AI-made CSAM, according to the NCMEC. The center received 4,700 reports of images or videos of the sexual exploitation of children made by generative AI, a category it only started tracking in 2023, a spokesperson said.

Social media companies relying on artificial intelligence software to moderate their platforms are generating unviable reports on cases of child sexual abuse, preventing US police from seeing potential leads and delaying investigations of alleged predators, the Guardian can reveal. By law, US-based social media companies are required to report any child sexual abuse material detected on their platforms to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC). NCMEC acts as a nationwide clearinghouse for leads about child abuse, which it forwards to the relevant law enforcement departments in the US and around the world. The organization said in its annual report that it received more than 32m reports of suspected child sexual exploitation from companies and the public in 2022, roughly 88m images, videos and other files. Meta is the largest reporter of these tips, with more than 27m, or 84%, generated by its Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp platforms in 2022.

"Big Sister is Watching You", it warned in big white letters, written behind a smiling photograph of Ylva Johansson, the EU commissioner in charge of home affairs. Within the bureaucratic confines of Brussels, it's rare for a politician to evoke enough anger to feature on a meme--let alone be labeled as the modern incarnation of author George Orwell's Big Brother by her colleagues. But Johansson has become a divisive figure in Europe. The Swedish politician has positioned herself in the midst of a vitriolic debate over online child sexual abuse material (CSAM), one that pits individual privacy against the safety of vulnerable young people. The EU Home Affairs Commissioner is the architect of a deeply controversial new bill that proposes ways to force tech companies, including those with encrypted platforms, to scan their users' private messages in an attempt to wipe both CSAM and grooming attempts off the internet.

Apple on Thursday said it's introducing new child safety features in iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and macOS as part of its efforts to limit the spread of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) in the U.S. To that effect, the iPhone maker said it intends to begin client-side scanning of images shared via every Apple device for known child abuse content as they are being uploaded into iCloud Photos, in addition to leveraging on-device machine learning to vet all iMessage images sent or received by minor accounts (aged under 13) to warn parents of sexually explicit photos shared over the messaging platform. Furthermore, Apple also plans to update Siri and Search to stage an intervention when users try to perform searches for CSAM-related topics, alerting that the "interest in this topic is harmful and problematic." "Messages uses on-device machine learning to analyze image attachments and determine if a photo is sexually explicit," Apple noted. "The feature is designed so that Apple does not get access to the messages." The feature, called Communication Safety, is said to be an opt-in setting that must be enabled by parents through the Family Sharing feature. Detection of known CSAM images involves carrying out on-device matching using a database of known CSAM image hashes provided by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and other child safety organizations before the photos are uploaded to the cloud.

Artificial intelligence helps farmers, doctors and rescue workers make a positive impact on society. Artificial intelligence (AI) powers many gadgets, like smartphones, smart thermostats and voice-activated virtual assistants that bring modern conveniences to daily life. Increasingly, AI is also being used to tackle critical social challenges. AI is a branch of computer science where machines can sense, learn, reason, act and adapt to the real world, amplifying human capabilities and automating tedious or dangerous tasks. Some experts believe AI has the potential to spark a serious social revolution.

Artificial intelligence is helping farmers, doctors and rescue workers improve their positive impact on society. Artificial intelligence (AI) powers many gadgets, like smartphones, smart thermostats and voice-activated virtual assistants that bring modern conveniences to daily life. Increasingly, AI is also being used to tackle critical social challenges. AI is a branch of computer science where machines can sense, learn, reason, act and adapt to the real world, amplifying human capabilities and automating tedious or dangerous tasks. Some experts believe AI has the potential to spark a serious social revolution.