The British Prime Minister is being asked by online safety group, Internet Watch Foundation (IWF).

The organisation removes child abuse content from the internet, and has reported large quantities of realistic child abuse material online generated by AI. 

The IWF published its findings after a five week study to understand the threats posed by emerging AI technologies. In that time, the IWF investigated 29 reports of URLs with AI-generated sexual abuse imagery, seven of which contained AI images. 

The URLs sometimes contained multiple class A and B images with male and female subjects as young as three years old. The IWF also found ‘manuals’ online to instruct offenders how to refine their prompts for more realistic results. 

“We are not currently seeing these images in huge numbers, but it is clear to us the potential exists for criminals to produce unprecedented quantities of life-like child sexual abuse imagery,” said Susie Hargreaves, IWF chief executive. “This would be potentially devastating for internet safety and for the safety of children online.”

AI images of this kind are illegal in the UK, but the IWF warns that proliferation and popularization of this technology could scale the pace of this practice beyond the capabilities of law enforcement. 

“We have a chance, now, to get ahead of this emerging technology, but legislation needs to be taking this into account, and must be fit for purpose in the light of this new threat,” said Hargreaves.

AI generated images pose a great threat, regardless of them being artificial. More AI imagery could draw more attention from IWF analysts away from images depicting ‘real’ abuse. 

“This would mean real victims could fall between the cracks, and opportunities to prevent real life abuse could be missed,” said Dan Sexton, chief technical officer at the IWF.

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Sunak acknowledged the need to address the regulatory aspects of AI during the upcoming global summit, set to take place in the autumn. The summit will focus on establishing guardrails to mitigate future risks posed by AI technology. Sunak has previously engaged with industry leaders, including representatives from Google and OpenAI.

“We are at a crossroads with AI,” said Hargreaves. “The continued abuse of this technology could have profoundly dark consequences – and could see more and more people exposed to this harmful content.”

“My worry is if this material becomes more widely and easily available, and can be produced at will – at the click of a button- we are heading for a very dangerous place in the future.”