London – Britain will become the first country to introduce laws specifically targeting AI tools used to generate child sexual abuse images, the government announced late Saturday.
The government will make it illegal to possess, create, or distribute AI tools designed to generate sexualized images of children, with offenders facing up to five years in prison, Interior Minister Yvette Cooper revealed.
Possession of AI “pedophile manuals” that instruct individuals on using AI for child sexual abuse will also be illegal, carrying a penalty of up to three years in prison.
“This is a truly disturbing phenomenon. Online child sexual abuse material is growing, as is the grooming of children and teenagers online. AI is now exacerbating this problem significantly,” Interior Minister Yvette Cooper told Sky News on Sunday.
She explained that AI tools make it easier for perpetrators to groom children, manipulate their images, and then use those images to blackmail young people into further abuse.
“It’s one of the most vile of crimes,” she added.
The new law will include banning “some of the AI models being used for child abuse,” Cooper said.
“Other countries are not yet doing this, but I hope others will follow suit,” she added.
AI tools are being used to generate child sexual abuse images by “nudeifying” real-life images of children or by “stitching” the faces of other children onto existing images, the government explained.
The new laws will also criminalize “predators who run websites designed for other pedophiles to share vile child sexual abuse content or advice on how to groom children,” with a maximum penalty of ten years in prison, the government said.
Cooper told the BBC on Sunday that a recent inquiry found that approximately 500,000 children across the UK are victims of some form of child abuse each year, “and the online aspect of that is an increasing and growing part of it.”
The measures will be introduced as part of the Crime and Policing Bill when it is presented to Parliament.
The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) has warned about the increasing number of AI-generated child sexual abuse images.
Over a 30-day period in 2024, IWF analysts identified 3,512 AI child abuse images on a single dark web site.
The number of images in the most serious category also rose by 10% in a year, the IWF found.
