Artificial intelligence is opening the door to a disturbing trend of people creating realistic images of children in sexual settings, which could increase the number of cases of sex crimes against kids in real life, experts warn. AI platforms that can mimic human conversation or create realistic images exploded in popularity late last year into 2023 following the release of chatbot ChatGPT, which served as a watershed moment for the use of artificial intelligence. As the curiosity of people across the world was piqued by the technology for work or school tasks, others have embraced the platforms for more nefarious purposes. The National Crime Agency (NCA), which is the U.K.’s lead agency combating organized crime, warned this week that the proliferation of machine-generated explicit images of children is having a “radicalizing” effect “normalizing” pedophilia and disturbing behavior against kids. “We assess that the viewing of these images – whether real or AI-generated – materially increases the risk of offenders moving on to sexually abusing children themselves,” NCA Director General Graeme Biggar said in a recent report.
Full report : Artificial intelligence could help ‘normalize’ child sexual abuse as graphic images erupt online.
