Artificial intelligence-generated imagery depicting the sexual abuse of children surged by 14 percent in 2025, as investigators face growing difficulty distinguishing synthetic content from real photographs, according to a new report.
The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), a British non-profit dedicated to removing child sexual abuse material (CSAM) from the internet, identified more than 8,000 AI-generated images and videos from user reports over the past year.
Of the AI-generated content, more than 3,400 involved "full-motion" AI-generated videos that are hyper-realistic and allow for multiple people to interact in the videos. Over 65 percent of these videos depicted the most severe forms of abuse, including rape, sexual torture, and bestiality, which are classified as the highest category of child sexual content under British law.
The IWF warned that AI is making it easier for anyone to create CSAM content, with some models requiring only a single reference image to produce child sexual content. One creator was thanked over 3,000 times for creating a 30-minute AI-generated sexual abuse video.
Kerry Smith, the IWF’s CEO, said, "We now face a technological landscape that can generate infinite violations with unprecedented ease."
The report urged the European Union to consider implementing a bloc-wide ban on both AI-generated child sexual abuse content and the tools used to create it.