The United Kingdom's National Crime Agency (NCA) and the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) have issued a stark joint warning to parents: cease publicly posting images of their children online. The advice comes as the volume of AI-generated child sexual abuse imagery continues to escalate at an alarming rate. In 2025 alone, the IWF identified 8,029 AI-generated images and videos of realistic child sexual abuse, marking a 14% increase from the previous year. The growth is most pronounced in video content, which skyrocketed from a mere 13 confirmed AI-generated abuse videos in 2024 to 3,440 last year—a staggering 264-fold increase.
Under UK law, such synthetic imagery is treated as child sexual abuse material regardless of how it was created or whether a real child was involved in its production. Tim Wright, a senior manager at the NCA, emphasised that enforcement alone cannot stop the threat. "While we and policing colleagues tackle offenders, prevention remains vital," he said. The joint guidance, published by the NCA and IWF, urges parents to lock down privacy settings on social media, restrict photo sharing to trusted groups such as 'close friends' lists, and audit older posts for identifying details like a child's face, school uniform, or location. It also advises revisiting consent previously given to schools, clubs, and sports organisations that photograph children.
The Surge in AI-Generated Abuse Imagery
The rapid advancement of generative artificial intelligence has democratised the creation of realistic but entirely fabricated images and videos. Deep learning models, including diffusion models and generative adversarial networks (GANs), can now produce high-resolution, photorealistic depictions of children engaged in sexual acts. These systems require only a small number of reference photos—often scraped from social media, school websites, or family photo albums—to generate convincing abuse material. The IWF has previously documented a case where a criminal gang extracted pupils' photographs from a school website and used AI to create more than 100 sexual images of the children involved.
The scale of the problem is vast. In 2024, the IWF confirmed over 7,000 AI-generated abuse images, but the actual number is likely far higher as detection methods struggle to keep pace with generation capabilities. The rapid growth in video is particularly concerning; videos are more immersive and can be shared more easily on encrypted platforms. The IWF's data also reveals a heavily gendered dimension: 98% of confirmed AI abuse imagery in 2024 involved girls where sex was recorded. This reflects broader patterns of online gender-based violence, where AI tools are disproportionately used to target females.
The Dangers of Sharenting in the AI Era
The concept of 'sharenting'—a portmanteau of sharing and parenting that entered the Collins English Dictionary in 2016—has long been a subject of discussion around privacy and identity theft. However, the emergence of powerful AI tools has transformed what was once a theoretical risk into an immediate and concrete threat. Every photo posted publicly feeds the pool of raw material that AI systems can use to create synthetic abuse imagery. Even seemingly harmless images of a child playing in a school uniform or celebrating a birthday can be repurposed.
A recent survey by UNICEF found that a quarter of children fear their images being turned into explicit deepfakes. This anxiety is not unfounded. In the UK, the IWF has reported multiple incidents where children's photos from ordinary social media posts were used to generate abusive content. The psychological impact on victims can be profound, as the images may circulate indefinitely and be difficult to remove. Unlike traditional child sexual abuse material, AI-generated content does not necessarily depict a real child, but it can still cause significant harm to the child whose likeness was used, as well as to the children who may be re-victimised by viewing such material.
How Parents Can Protect Their Children
The joint guidance from the NCA and IWF offers practical steps for parents. First, adjust privacy settings on all social media platforms to the most restrictive level. On platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, this means setting posts to 'friends only' or 'close friends' and avoiding public or 'friends of friends' settings. Second, audit older posts: remove or archive any images that show a child's face, school uniform, home address, or other identifying information. Parents should also consider using generic symbols or emojis to cover faces in photos they wish to share. Third, review permissions given to organisations that photograph children. Schools, sports teams, and clubs often ask for consent to use images for newsletters or promotional materials. Parents should restrict this consent to specific, non-public uses and revoke it periodically.
Additionally, parents should be mindful of geolocation data embedded in photos. Many smartphones automatically tag images with location coordinates. Before sharing, parents should strip this metadata or disable location services for camera apps. The guidance also advises using separate, private accounts for sharing family photos rather than main profiles, and communicating with close family members through encrypted messaging apps rather than public feeds. The NCA and IWF stress that the goal is not to stop sharing altogether but to shrink the pool of publicly available raw material that abusers can exploit.
Regulatory and Legal Responses
Governments and regulators are racing to catch up with the technology. The UK government has recently moved to ban so-called nudification apps—tools that use AI to digitally remove clothing from images of women and girls. These apps, which the IWF described as "products with no reason to exist," are now illegal to produce, distribute, or use in the UK. The law has also been adjusted to allow AI firms to test their systems for potential abuse in generating child sexual abuse material, a move intended to encourage proactive safety measures.
Ofcom, the UK's communications regulator, is actively enforcing the Online Safety Act. It has opened a child safety investigation into Telegram, following earlier probes of X and its AI chatbot Grok. The government is also considering an under-16 social media ban, which would restrict access to platforms that host user-generated content. Campaigners have long pushed for stronger European tools against nonconsensual deepfake imagery, and the European Commission is working on a legislative framework that would mandate AI transparency and impose strict penalties for misuse. However, regulation alone cannot solve the problem; international cooperation and platform accountability are essential, as AI-generated abuse material often crosses borders.
The Broader Deepfake Crisis
The deepfake phenomenon extends beyond child sexual abuse. Celebrities, politicians, and ordinary individuals have all been victims of nonconsensual synthetic imagery. In recent years, deepfake porn has been used to harass and blackmail people, while manipulated videos of public figures have raised concerns about disinformation. The speed at which AI-generated content can be created and disseminated has forced lawmakers to move faster than they had anticipated. The NCA's guidance shifts some of that urgency to the family photo album, reminding parents that their everyday sharing habits have real-world implications.
Kerry Smith, IWF chief executive, underscored the seriousness of the threat: "These are not hypothetical threats, they are real." She emphasised that the aim is informed sharing with trusted people rather than no sharing at all. The advice, in the end, is less about causing panic and more about empowering parents to take proactive steps to safeguard their children's digital footprints. As AI capabilities continue to evolve, the responsibility falls not only on tech companies and regulators but also on individuals to be vigilant about the data they put into the public domain. The warning from the NCA and IWF is clear: every photo shared publicly is a potential ingredient for synthetic abuse, and the time to act is now.