A concerning trend has emerged in the UK, where children are increasingly reporting explicit deepfake images of themselves, raising alarms about online safety and the capabilities of artificial intelligence. The Report Remove service, designed to help young individuals shield themselves from unwanted explicit imagery, has documented 420 reports in just the first half of this year—a staggering increase that has already surpassed the total for all of 2025.
Alarming Increase in Reports
The Report Remove service, a collaborative initiative between the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) and the NSPCC, has seen a significant uptick in instances of children flagging manipulated images. In the first six months of 2026, 420 reports were made by children who felt their likenesses had been digitally altered to produce explicit content. This figure dwarfs the previous year’s total of 397, highlighting a troubling escalation in this disturbing trend.
Dan Sexton, chief technology officer at the IWF, emphasised the challenges posed by the availability of sophisticated AI tools. “If someone can take a benign image of a child from the internet and create child sexual abuse material with it, there is nothing that child can do to stop it from happening apart from preventing anyone from taking pictures of them,” he stated. This alarming reality underscores the urgent need for heightened online safety measures.
The Role of AI in Content Manipulation
As technology advances, the tools for creating and distributing explicit content have become more accessible. Sexton pointed out that the rise of AI-generated imagery was a cause for concern right from the beginning. “This is one of the harms we were worried about when we first saw AI image generators being used,” he said, indicating that these technologies can be misused to produce harmful content involving real children.
To address the surge in reports from under-18s, Report Remove has recently implemented a new feature in its online submission form that allows users to specify if the material they are reporting is a deepfake. This change reflects the growing recognition of the issue and the need for targeted solutions to combat it.
The Legal Landscape and Safety Recommendations
The IWF has reported that many of the manipulated images flagged in 2025 and 2026 were severe enough to be classified as child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Under UK law, the creation and distribution of AI-generated CSAM is illegal, highlighting the government’s commitment to tackling this pressing issue.
Rani Govender, an online safety expert at the NSPCC, stressed the responsibility of tech companies to implement stronger safeguards in their AI products. “This rise in children reaching out because fake or AI-generated sexual images have been created of them is alarming but also sadly predictable,” she remarked. She urged the industry to embed robust protections to prevent the creation of such material from the outset.
The potential consequences of these deepfake incidents can be dire, with some victims facing sextortion—a form of blackmail where perpetrators threaten to publish explicit material unless they receive payment or further compromising images.
Protecting Children in the Digital Age
The ongoing rise of AI-enabled deepfakes has prompted urgent warnings about sharing identifiable images of children online. Last month, guidance issued by the National Crime Agency and IWF advised parents and guardians to restrict public access to pictures of their children. Recommendations included making social media accounts private and sharing images only with a trusted circle of friends.
Moreover, there have been alarming reports of cybercriminals scraping images of children from school websites to create CSAM, prompting educational institutions to reevaluate their online presence. Schools are now being advised to remove identifiable images of students to mitigate the risk of such exploitation.
Why it Matters
The surge in reports of deepfake imagery underscores a critical intersection of technology and child safety in our increasingly digital world. As AI tools become ever more powerful and accessible, the potential for misuse grows, posing a significant risk to vulnerable young individuals. It is imperative for parents, educators, and technology companies to work together to safeguard children in this new landscape, ensuring that robust protections are in place to prevent the creation and distribution of harmful content. The well-being of the younger generation depends on our collective action to foster a safer online environment.