A surge in AI-generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM) has been documented across publicly accessible areas of the internet, exposing even more people to the horrific imagery, the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) found.

In a new report, the online safety advocacy group said that many of the images and videos of children being hurt and abused were so realistic that they can be very difficult to tell apart from imagery of real children, and are regarded as criminal content under UK law.

IWF analysts have seen a 6% rise in confirmed reports containing AI generated CSAM in the past six months along, compared with the preceding 12 months.

Most alarmingly, almost all (99%) the content flagged to the IWF was visible on publicly available areas of the internet, rather than hidden away on the dark web.

The majority of reports come from members of the public (78%) who have stumbled across the criminal and heinous imagery on sites that host forums or AI galleries, showing that the issues is pervasive and moving away from the dark reaches of the internet and into the mainstream.

New data also shows that more than half of the AI-generated content found in the past six months was hosted on servers in two countries, Russia (36%) and the US (22%), followed by Japan (11%) and the Netherlands (8%).

“This criminal content is not confined to mysterious places on the dark web,” a senior internet content analyst at the IWF said. “Nearly all of the reports or URLs that we’ve dealt with that contained AI generated child sexual abuse material were found on the clear web.

“I find it really chilling, as it feels like we are at a tipping point and the potential is there for organisations like ourselves and the police to be overwhelmed by hundreds and hundreds of new images, where we don’t always know if there is a real child that needs help.”

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Videos and images of real victims are often being used by perpetrators to generate some of the AI imagery, which re-traumatises existing victims and allows perpetrators to create more extreme content.

Deepfake videos of abuse continue to use imagery of existing child victims in new AI imagery and videos, as noted in previous IWF reports.

Viewing AI-generated CSAM is noted to be just as psychologically harmful to unsuspecting viewers as watching real CSAM, the IWF noted.

“People can be under no illusion that AI generated child sexual abuse material causes horrific harm, not only to those who might see it but to those survivors who are repeatedly victimised every time images and videos of their abuse are mercilessly exploited for the twisted enjoyment of predators online,” Derek Ray-Hill, interim chief executive officer at the IWF, said.

“To create the level of sophistication seen in the AI imagery, the software used has also had to be trained on existing sexual abuse images and videos of real child victims shared and distributed on the internet.

“The protection of children and the prevention of AI abuse imagery must be prioritised by legislators and the tech industry above any thought of profit. Recent months show that this problem is not going away and is in fact getting worse. We urgently need to bring laws up to speed for the digital age, and see tangible measures being put in place that address potential risks.”