AI images of child sexual abuse getting ‘significantly more realistic’, says watchdog
Images of child sexual abuse created by artificial intelligence are becoming “significantly more realistic”, according to an online safety watchdog.The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) said advances in AI are being reflected in illegal content created and consumed by paedophiles, saying: “In 2024, the quality of AI-generated videos improved exponentially, and all types of AI imagery assessed appeared significantly more realistic as the technology developed.”The IWF revealed in its annual report that it received 245 reports of AI-generated child sexual abuse imagery that broke UK law in 2024 – an increase of 380% on the 51 seen in 2023.The reports equated to 7,644 images and a small number of videos, reflecting the fact that one URL can contain multiple examples of illegal material.The largest proportion of those images was “category A” material, the term for the most extreme type of child sexual abuse content that includes penetrative sexual activity or sadism.
This accounted for 39% of the actionable AI material seen by the IWF.The government announced in February it will become illegal to possess, create or distribute AI tools designed to generate child sexual abuse material, closing a legal loophole that had alarmed police and online safety campaigners.It will also become illegal for anyone to possess manuals that teach people how to use AI tools to either make abusive imagery or to help them abuse children.The IWF, which operates a hotline in the UK but has a global remit, said the AI-generated imagery is increasingly appearing on the open internet and not just on the “dark web” – an area of the internet accessed by specialised browsers.It said the most convincing AI-generated material can be indistinguishable from real images and videos, even for trained IWF analysts.
The watchdog’s annual report also announced record levels of webpages hosting child sexual abuse imagery in 2024.The IWF said there were 291,273 reports of child sexual abuse imagery last year, an increase of 6% on 2023.The majority of victims in the reports were girls.The IWF also announced it was making a new safety tool available to smaller websites for free, to help them spot and prevent the spread of abuse material on their platforms.The tool, called Image Intercept, can detect and block images that appear in an IWF database containing 2.
8m images that have been digitally marked as criminal imagery.The watchdog said it would help smaller platforms comply with the newly introduced Online Safety Act, which contains provisions on protecting children and tackling illegal content such as child sexual abuse material.Derek Ray-Hill, the interim chief executive of the IWF, said making the tool freely available was a “major moment in online safety”.The technology secretary, Peter Kyle, said the rise in AI-generated abuse and sextortion – where children are blackmailed over the sending of intimate images – underlined how “threats to young people online are constantly evolving”.He said the new image intercept tool was a “powerful example of how innovation can be part of the solution in making online spaces safer for children”.
Fears for health of Alaa Abd el-Fattah and mother as hunger strikes take toll
The family of the imprisoned British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah say they fear for his health along with that of his mother, Laila Soueif, as both continued their hunger strikes to demand his freedom.Relatives of Soueif said they were worried she was “dying in slow motion” after eight months on full or partial hunger strike. “What are we supposed to do, just sit around and wait to die?” said Soueif.Fattah, who is in prison near Cairo, received medical treatment for vomiting and severe stomach pains earlier this week, after consuming nothing but herbal tea, black coffee and rehydration salts for more than 55 days.He began a hunger strike on the day his mother was admitted to St Thomas’ hospital in London in February, almost 150 days into her own hunger strike, where she received a glucose drip intended to save her life
‘It’s an existential moment’: Greens take on Reform in fight for fed-up voters
With its thatched cottages and patchwork fields, Wiltshire is a traditional true-blue Tory heartland; its county council is always dominated by Conservatives.But this week, the Greens think they stand a good chance of winning their first seats on the council because people are so fed up with the main parties.Zack Polanski, the party’s deputy leader, has been on a blitz of the rural areas of England trying to drum up support. A vegan who lives in Hackney, east London, one might not think the country’s farmers and rural communities would find much common ground with him.“The fact is, inequality hurts you no matter who you are,” he said as he prepared for a gruelling day of campaigning
No 10 bullish about immigration, despite Labour MPs’ concerns about rightward shift
Labour is under no illusions about how difficult Thursday’s local elections will be for the government.Nigel Farage’s Reform is on course to take hundreds of council seats and is ahead in the race for two mayoralties. Keir Starmer has not even campaigned in the Runcorn and Helsby byelection, such is the expectation of defeat.“The opening image of this set of elections was a Labour MP punching a swing voter in the face,” one party insider admitted. “Of course it’s going to be tough
Starmer claims voters being ‘conned’ by Tories and Reform UK as parties are planning a coalition – as it happened
Keir Starmer has claimed that Conservative voters and Reform UK voters are both being “conned” because neither party is being honest about the prospect of the two parties merging.In an interview with Beth Rigby from Sky News during his visit to Rossendale in Lancashire, asked whether he was more worried about the Tories or Reform in this week’s local elections, Starmer said he saw them as “equally” challenging. He went on:The Tories have got a terrible record, 14 years of failure. Reform moan about everything, but have got no answers.And at the end of the day, Reform and the Tories, there’s all this talk about them getting together merging
Sound the alarm for a KemiKaze breakfast, then hit snooze for the Starmer roadshow | John Crace
Even Kemi Badenoch’s closest friends know to give her a wide berth in the mornings. Especially her closest friends. They know what’s good for them. Sometimes absence is an act of friendship. Intimacy by proxy
Labour and Conservatives face a challenging electoral test | Letters
Talk of electoral pacts between the Conservatives and Reform UK for the right-of-centre vote has been widely reported. Your editorial (24 April) notes that as the policies of these parties move further right, some traditional Conservative voters will shift their allegiance away. Yet these voters are not going to the Labour party, as its leadership follows rightwards. A litany of government policies must seem as abhorrent to “old school” Conservatives as they do to traditional Labour values.Instead, there is steady growth in support for parties that are broadly in the soft left, socially and environmentally aware space: Liberal Democrats, Greens, the Scottish National party and Plaid Cymru
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