No amount of protection by parents can prevent their children from experimenting online and being targeted by online predators, according to the head of Ireland’s internet reporting centre.
Chief executive of the Irish Internet Hotline (IIH), Mick Moran, is warning that artificial intelligence (AI)-generated child sex abuse material is now becoming “normal”, with the risk that sexual activity with children will also itself become “normalised”, the Irish Examiner reports.
He was speaking as the Council of Europe issued a plea to member states to take action against the growth of AI-generated or altered images of child sexual abuse.
In a joint communique, the council’s Lanzarote committee and Cybercrime Convention Committee said: “Even when no ‘real child’ is depicted, perpetrators use AI-generated child sexual abuse material to groom children and ‘normalise’ sexual abuse.
"AI has significantly increased the realism and volume of such materials, exposing more children to harm and making detection and victim identification harder for law enforcement.”
The two committees are urging European states to “prioritise the investigation and protection of child victims, and implement child-friendly procedural safeguards to protect against secondary victimisation and re-traumatisation.”
They also want sanctions that are “effective, proportionate and dissuasive, reflecting the serious harm caused to victims, survivors and society”.
In April, the IIH made a submission to the Oireachtas AI Committee, which is currently examining an AI regulation bill.
The submission said that AI tools capable of producing child sexual abuse imagery should be specifically banned under proposed legislation. It also sought the prohibition of ‘AI girlfriends’ and ‘AI boyfriends’ for children under the legislation.
