UK to become first country to criminalise AI child abuse tools

LONDON: Britain will become the first country to introduce laws against AI tools used to generate sexual abuse images, the government announced Saturday.

The government will make it illegal to possess, create or distribute AI tools designed to generate sexualised images of children, punishable by up to five years in prison, interior minister Yvette Cooper revealed.

It will also be illegal to possess AI "paedophile manuals" which teach people how to use AI to sexually abuse children, punishable by up to three years in prison.

"We know that sick predators' activities online often lead to them carrying out the most horrific abuse in person," said Cooper.

The new laws are "designed to keep our children safe online as technologies evolve. It is vital that we tackle child sexual abuse online as well as offline," she added.

"Children will be protected from the growing threat of predators generating AI images and from online sexual abuse as the UK becomes the first country in the world to create new AI sexual abuse offences," said a government statement.

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," said the government.

The new laws will also criminalise "predators who run websites designed for other paedophiles to share vile child sexual abuse content or advice on how to groom children," punishable by up to ten years in prison, said the government.

The measures will be introduced as part of the Crime and Policing Bill when it comes to parliament.

The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) has warned of the growing number of sexual abuse AI images of children being produced.

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 the most serious category of images also rose by 10% in a year, it found.