Almost one in six UK adults admit to having seen deepfake pornographic images, an annual review has found.
The second International AI Safety report, which reviews possible risks from the development of Artificial Intelligence, said the use of AI to generate pornographic images of real people is of “particular concern”.
The review noted that 15 per cent of UK adults have seen such content, while the number of cases involving children ‘nudifying’ other children is “rising”.
Eleven-years-old
A poll of 4,300 secondary school teachers in England conducted on behalf of The Guardian found that around one in ten were aware of students generating “deepfake, sexually explicit videos” during the last academic year.
One in ten of these incidents involved children as young as eleven, while three per cent were even younger.
Dr Tanya Horeck, Professor of Film and Feminist Media Studies at Anglia Ruskin University, said that all the headteachers she spoke to “had incidents of deepfakes in their schools and they saw this as an emerging problem”.
Similar incidents have “risen sharply” on the Isle of Man, where its police force noted that children have created pornographic images to bully or carry out revenge on other children.
‘Exploitation’
Last month, the Westminster Government announced that it would criminalise the creation of explicit deepfake images of people without their consent.
Under the Online Safety Act 2023, seeking to share non-consensual intimate images was already illegal but the implementation of the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 will criminalise the creation of such content.
The Government plans to ban dedicated ‘nudification’ tools under its Crime and Policing Bill, which is currently progressing through Parliament.
Technology Secretary Liz Kendall stated: “We will not stand by while technology is weaponised to abuse, humiliate and exploit them through the creation of non-consensual sexually explicit deepfakes.”
Pornhub to stop access to new UK users in age verification row