Latest news with #paedophiles
The Guardian
10-07-2025
- The Guardian
AI-generated child sexual abuse videos surging online, watchdog says
The number of videos online of child sexual abuse generated by artificial intelligence has surged as paedophiles have pounced on developments in the technology. The Internet Watch Foundation said AI videos of abuse had 'crossed the threshold' of being near-indistinguishable from 'real imagery' and had sharply increased in prevalence online this year. In the first six months of 2025, the UK-based internet safety watchdog verified 1,286 AI-made videos with child sexual abuse material (CSAM) that broke the law, compared with two in the same period last year. The IWF said just over 1,000 of the videos featured category A abuse, the classification for the most severe type of material. The organisation said the multibillion-dollar investment spree in AI was producing widely available video-generation models that were being manipulated by paedophiles. 'It is a very competitive industry. Lots of money is going into it, so unfortunately there is a lot of choice for perpetrators,' said one IWF analyst. The videos were found as part of a 400% increase in URLs featuring AI-made child sexual abuse in the first six months of 2025. The IWF received reports of 210 such URLs, compared with 42 last year, with each webpage featuring hundreds of images, including the surge in video content. The IWF saw one post on a dark web forum where a paedophile referred to the speed of improvements in AI, saying how they had mastered one AI tool only for 'something new and better to come along'. IWF analysts said the images appeared to have been created by taking a freely available basic AI model and 'fine-tuning' it with CSAM in order to produce realistic videos. In some cases these models had been fine-tuned with a handful of CSAM videos, the IWF said. The most realistic AI abuse videos seen this year were based on real-life victims, the watchdog said. Derek Ray-Hill, the IWF's interim chief executive, said the growth in capability of AI models, their wide availability and the ability to adapt them for criminal purposes could lead to an explosion of AI-made CSAM online. 'There is an incredible risk of AI-generated CSAM leading to an absolute explosion that overwhelms the clear web,' he said, adding that a growth in such content could fuel criminal activity linked to child trafficking, child sexual abuse and modern slavery. The use of existing victims of sexual abuse in AI-generated images meant that paedophiles were significantly expanding the volume of CSAM online without having to rely on new victims, he added. The UK government is cracking down on AI-generated CSAM by making it illegal to possess, create or distribute AI tools designed to create abuse content. People found to have breached the new law will face up to five years in jail. Ministers are also outlawing possession of manuals that teach potential offenders how to use AI tools to either make abusive imagery or to help them abuse children. Offenders could face a prison sentence of up to three years. Announcing the changes in February, the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, said it was vital that 'we tackle child sexual abuse online as well as offline'. AI-generated CSAM is illegal under the Protection of Children Act 1978, which criminalises the taking, distribution and possession of an 'indecent photograph or pseudo photograph' of a child.
The Guardian
10-07-2025
- The Guardian
AI-generated child sexual abuse videos surging online, watchdog says
The number of videos online of child sexual abuse generated by artificial intelligence has surged as paedophiles have pounced on developments in the technology. The Internet Watch Foundation said AI videos of abuse had 'crossed the threshold' of being near-indistinguishable from 'real imagery' and had sharply increased in prevalence online this year. In the first six months of 2025, the UK-based internet safety watchdog verified 1,286 AI-made videos with child sexual abuse material (CSAM) that broke the law, compared with two in the same period last year. The IWF said just over 1,000 of the videos featured category A abuse, the classification for the most severe type of material. The organisation said the multibillion-dollar investment spree in AI was producing widely available video-generation models that were being manipulated by paedophiles. 'It is a very competitive industry. Lots of money is going into it, so unfortunately there is a lot of choice for perpetrators,' said one IWF analyst. The videos were found as part of a 400% increase in URLs featuring AI-made child sexual abuse in the first six months of 2025. The IWF received reports of 210 such URLs, compared with 42 last year, with each webpage featuring hundreds of images, including the surge in video content. The IWF saw one post on a dark web forum where a paedophile referred to the speed of improvements in AI, saying how they had mastered one AI tool only for 'something new and better to come along'. IWF analysts said the images appeared to have been created by taking a freely available basic AI model and 'fine-tuning' it with CSAM in order to produce realistic videos. In some cases these models had been fine-tuned with a handful of CSAM videos, the IWF said. The most realistic AI abuse videos seen this year were based on real-life victims, the watchdog said. Derek Ray-Hill, the IWF's interim chief executive, said the growth in capability of AI models, their wide availability and the ability to adapt them for criminal purposes could lead to an explosion of AI-made CSAM online. 'There is an incredible risk of AI-generated CSAM leading to an absolute explosion that overwhelms the clear web,' he said, adding that a growth in such content could fuel criminal activity linked to child trafficking, child sexual abuse and modern slavery. The use of existing victims of sexual abuse in AI-generated images meant that paedophiles were significantly expanding the volume of CSAM online without having to rely on new victims, he added. The UK government is cracking down on AI-generated CSAM by making it illegal to possess, create or distribute AI tools designed to create abuse content. People found to have breached the new law will face up to five years in jail. Ministers are also outlawing possession of manuals that teach potential offenders how to use AI tools to either make abusive imagery or to help them abuse children. Offenders could face a prison sentence of up to three years. Announcing the changes in February, the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, said it was vital that 'we tackle child sexual abuse online as well as offline'. AI-generated CSAM is illegal under the Protection of Children Act 1978, which criminalises the taking, distribution and possession of an 'indecent photograph or pseudo photograph' of a child.
Malay Mail
04-07-2025
- Malay Mail
Singaporean youth admits luring man on dating app, demanding S$2,000 after posing as minor
SINGAPORE, July 4 — A teenager who pretended to be a minor on dating apps to entrap and extort alleged 'paedophiles' was convicted of extortion in Singapore today. The Straits Times reported that Shaaqir Noor'rifqy Mohammed Noorrizat, 19, admitted in court to conspiring with a younger accomplice to pose as underage individuals on platforms like Grindr and Telegram in order to lure men looking for sex, confront them, and demand money to keep silent. In one incident, a 24-year-old man who believed he was meeting a 15-year-old boy for sex was tricked into turning up at the void deck of a Bukit Batok block of flats around noon on November 6, 2024. When he arrived, Shaaqir and his then-17-year-old accomplice, who cannot be named due to his age, recorded the encounter and confronted him. 'They told him that they would keep this a secret if he paid them, before stopping the recording,' said Assistant Public Prosecutor Chye Jer Yuan. 'The (man) agreed and both accused followed him to withdraw a sum of S$2,000 (RM6,630).' The pair deleted the recording in front of the victim after receiving the money. They were arrested around 11pm that same day. The court heard that Shaaqir had masterminded the scheme. '(Shaaqir) had come up with the idea to impersonate underage females or males on online dating applications to lure paedophiles and extort money from them,' said Chye. Shaaqir pleaded guilty to one count of extortion, with two other similar charges to be considered during sentencing. His case has been adjourned to August while probation and reformative training suitability reports are being prepared. His accomplice's case is still pending. It was not revealed in court how the pair's offences came to light.
Daily Mail
16-06-2025
- Daily Mail
Revealed: The eight perverted grooming gangs convicted of preying on girls
Since the Daily Mail exposed the scandal of children being groomed for sex by gangs of South Asian men 15 years ago, almost 400 abusers have been brought to justice. In Rochdale alone, eight rings of mainly Pakistani-heritage paedophiles have been convicted of preying on largely white girls in the early 2000s – and a further 20 men are awaiting trial. Recent cases which underline the scale of the scourge in a string of Britain's towns and cities include: THE MARKET STALL GANG Just last Friday, seven men were convicted of sexually exploiting and raping two white schoolgirls in Rochdale. Ringleader Mohammed Zahid, 64, was known as 'Knickerman' because of his underwear stall on Rochdale's centuries-old market. The depraved father-of-three used his business to target children from troubled backgrounds, grooming the pair from when they were just 13. Between 2001 and 2006 they were treated as 'sex slaves', a trial in Manchester heard, with Zahid passing them on to paedophile taxi drivers in return for payment where they were subjected to further abuse. As well as Zahid, Mushtaq Ahmed, 67, Kasir Bashir, 50 – who is on the run after absconding – Mohammed Shahzad, 44, Naheem Akram, 48, Nisar Hussain, 41, and Roheez Khan, 39, all face lengthy prison sentences. THE TAKEAWAY BROTHERS Three brothers who used a 'dingy' flat above a takeaway in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, to groom and abuse underage girls were jailed earlier this year. Shaha Amran Miah, 49, Shaha Alman Miah, 47, and Shaha Joman Miah, 38, were all convicted of a string of sexual offences against teenage girls between 2008 and 2010. They were jailed for a total of 54 years. THE CHILDREN'S HOME GANG Seven men who committed a string of child-sex abuse offences against two teenage girls in Rotherham were jailed for a total of 106 years last September. At times the victims were collected by their abusers from children's homes. Mohammed Amar, 42, Mohammed Siyab, 44, Yasser Ajaibe, 39, Mohammed Sadiq, 49, Abid Saddiq, 43, Tahir Yassin, 38, and Ramin Bari, 37, were handed sentences of between six and 25 years. It brought the number of men to face justice in Operation Stovewood – the largest investigation of its kind undertaken in the UK – to 36. It was launched after the Jay Report found that at least 1,400 girls were abused by gangs of men of mainly Pakistani heritage in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013.
The Sun
23-05-2025
- Politics
- The Sun
Setting sex offenders free with sultana-sized scrotums won't solve anything – here's what will
THE Labourite's Justice Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, was brought up for a time in Saudi Arabia. And it seems to have shaped her. Because this week, she announced that paedophiles should be chemically castrated. 5 Yup. Nonces must be made to drink chemicals in such vast quantities that their scrotum becomes the size of a sultana. And I've been struggling to understand why a Starmerite would say such a thing. I now think I have an answer. As we know, jail sentences these days are a joke. You rampage through a packed shopping centre with a sword, are sentenced by the judge to do 15 minutes in the nick, and because prisons are so overcrowded these days, they release you before you've even had a chance to unpack your suitcase. Burglars, vicious thugs, drug smugglers. They go to prison in the morning, have some pleasant sex with their attractive warden, enjoy a slap-up lunch and are home in time for tea. And then, that night, they break into your house and steal your television. This kind of thing doesn't go down well with the electorate. But what if Ms Mahmood was able to argue that she's releasing them because they are no longer able to commit their dastardly crimes? What if she's able to say that the nonce is safe to walk the streets because with no testicles, he has the same sexual urges as a tennis racquet. She's even alluded to this, saying that sex offenders could only be released from prison on the condition that the state reduces their testosterone levels to a point where they'd rather cheese grate their own face than have sex. Those weren't her actual words, but it's what she meant. So what's next? Shall we cut off the hands of those who've been convicted of shoplifting? Run over people who've been caught speeding? Surgically implant a blade in the bottoms of those who've been done for a knife crime? Paedos WANT to be castrated to banish sick 'desires', reform tsar says - as crackdown rolled out in 20 UK jails And what of those idiots who cut down the tree in Sycamore Gap? What does Ms Mahmood reckon we should do with them? Chainsaw them off at the shins? Maybe that's what Ms Mahmood has in mind. Because if she does this, it solves the problem of prison overcrowding at a stroke. People will be rehabilitated in no time at all. The problem I have with this argument is that I don't see prison as a place of rehabilitation. I see it as a place where you go to be punished for the crime you've committed. And as I believe the state does not have the right to vandalise human beings, no matter what they've done, my solution to prison overcrowding is different. Build more prisons. EMOJI WORLD RULES Two-wheel transport for a slow news day 5 I WAS greatly amused to hear this week that a BBC correspondent's bicycle has been stolen in Amsterdam. It was no ordinary bike. Because Anna Holligan had turned it into a mobile outside broadcasting studio, fitting it with solar panels and brackets for lights and cameras. It looked ridiculous. Like the back end of a bicycle had been welded to a wheelbarrow full of scrap. What made me laugh though is that Ms Holligan, above with her bike, said that when she arrives at a breaking news story on it, people feel more comfortable with her as a journalist. Really? I only ask because if you want to cover a breaking news story, surely you're better off using a car. If you go there on a bike, especially one that looks like it weighs about three tons, you won't get there until the story you're trying to cover has become about as topical as the volcanic eruption that destroyed Pompeii. GAME OF GIVE & TAKE I DON'T understand a lot of what goes on in Sir Starmer's well- moisturised head. And this week, he was more unfathomable than ever. 5 Because he has given away the Chagos Islands, which are ours, to Mauritius. And we will pay them £101million a year, for 99 years, for us to use the military base there. It could be argued, I suppose, that it's silly for us to govern a few specks of land that are thousands of miles away. But they're not exactly close to Mauritius either. It gets worse. Because we will only be allowed to use the strategically vital base if the government of Mauritius gives us permission. Which seems unlikely because, like most of the smaller countries in the world these days, Mauritius can't even build a park bench without permission from their paymasters in China. So why's he done this? Why give away sovereign British territory to a foreign power that's not necessarily friendly? And what's next? Is he going to give the Isle of Wight to North Korea? Or the Shetland Islands to Donald Trump? If he is in the mood for this kind of thing and plainly he is, maybe he'd like to give Anglesey to me. I'd even let him continue to use the lighthouse there for the very reasonable sum of just £200million a year.
