🔗 Share this article

Tech firms and child protection agencies will be granted permission to assess whether artificial intelligence tools can generate child exploitation images under new UK laws.

Substantial Rise in AI-Generated Harmful Content

The declaration coincided with findings from a protection monitoring body showing that reports of AI-generated child sexual abuse material have more than doubled in the past year, growing from 199 in 2024 to 426 in 2025.

New Legal Framework

Under the changes, the government will permit approved AI developers and child safety organizations to examine AI systems – the foundational technology for conversational AI and visual AI tools – and ensure they have adequate safeguards to stop them from producing images of child sexual abuse.

"Fundamentally about stopping abuse before it occurs," stated the minister for AI and online safety, noting: "Specialists, under rigorous protocols, can now identify the risk in AI systems promptly."

Tackling Regulatory Obstacles

The amendments have been implemented because it is against the law to produce and possess CSAM, meaning that AI creators and others cannot create such images as part of a testing process. Until now, authorities had to delay action until AI-generated CSAM was published online before addressing it.

This legislation is aimed at averting that problem by helping to stop the production of those images at source.

Legal Structure

The changes are being added by the authorities as modifications to the crime and policing bill, which is also establishing a prohibition on owning, producing or distributing AI systems designed to generate exploitative content.

Practical Consequences

This week, the minister toured the London headquarters of Childline and listened to a mock-up call to counsellors involving a account of AI-based abuse. The interaction portrayed a adolescent seeking help after being blackmailed using a sexualised deepfake of themselves, constructed using AI.

"When I hear about children facing extortion online, it is a cause of intense frustration in me and rightful concern amongst families," he stated.

Concerning Statistics

A leading internet monitoring organization reported that cases of AI-generated exploitation content – such as webpages that may contain numerous files – had significantly increased so far this year.

Instances of the most severe content – the gravest form of abuse – rose from 2,621 images or videos to 3,086.

• Female children were overwhelmingly victimized, accounting for 94% of prohibited AI depictions in 2025
• Depictions of infants to toddlers increased from five in 2024 to 92 in 2025

Industry Response

The law change could "represent a vital step to ensure AI products are safe before they are released," stated the chief executive of the online safety foundation.

"AI tools have made it so victims can be victimised all over again with just a few clicks, providing criminals the capability to make possibly limitless quantities of advanced, lifelike exploitative content," she added. "Content which further exploits survivors' suffering, and renders children, particularly female children, less safe on and off line."

Support Session Data

The children's helpline also published details of counselling sessions where AI has been mentioned. AI-related harms mentioned in the conversations comprise:

• Using AI to evaluate body size, body and looks
• AI assistants discouraging young people from talking to trusted adults about harm
• Facing harassment online with AI-generated material
• Digital extortion using AI-faked pictures

Between April and September this year, Childline conducted 367 support sessions where AI, conversational AI and related terms were mentioned, significantly more as many as in the same period last year.

Fifty percent of the mentions of AI in the 2025 sessions were connected with psychological wellbeing and wellbeing, including utilizing AI assistants for support and AI therapy apps.