A picture of my children at the beach, my son playing soccer or even my entire family, smiling in front of our house are all examples of photos I've posted to social media. I know I'm not alone, considering just how often I've seen similar images highlighting the goings-on of modern lives. But AI has created a disturbing new risk that allows the use of ordinary photos of real children like the ones I mentioned above, to be manipulated into sexual abuse imagery without the child — or their parents — ever knowing.To be clear, this is not a theoretical threat.332 AI-generated child sexual abuse ads slipped through
(Image credit: Shutterstock)A new investigation from the Tech Transparency Project (TTP) found hundreds of ads containing AI-generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM) running across Facebook and Instagram. Researchers identified four real children whose ordinary photos had been manipulated, according to WIRED, including two teenage influencers, a preteen whose image appeared on a stock-photo site and a young member of a European royal family.In total, TTP found 332 ads containing AI-generated child sexual abuse material, or CSAM. Most depicted a child whose photograph had been manipulated using AI to make it appear they were performing a sexual act.The findings are an alarming reminder of how generative AI has changed the risks around sharing photos of children online. Creating convincing fake imagery no longer requires an explicit photograph in the first place. An ordinary picture can provide the raw material.How ordinary photos become AI-generated abuseGenerative AI image tools can take an existing photograph and modify parts of it while preserving recognizable features of the person in the original.That's what researchers say happened to several of the children identified in the Meta ads.According to WIRED, researchers were able to trace images of four minors back to their original sources. Two were teenage influencers with public social media accounts. Another was a preteen whose photograph was available through a stock-photo website. The fourth was a young member of a European royal family.Sign up to the Tom's AI Guide weekly newsletter summing up all the biggest AI news you need to know. Plus, analysis from our AI editors and tips on how to use the latest AI tools!None of those original photographs needed to contain sexual material for them to be misused."AI apps are making it far too easy to create realistic criminal imagery of child sexual abuse, creating the new risk of everyday photos of children being taken and transformed into sexual content," Emma Hardy, director of communications at the Internet Watch Foundation, told WIRED.Once an ordinary image is publicly accessible, someone can potentially download it and feed it into an AI tool designed to alter photographs.
