The rise of artificial intelligence has brought extraordinary opportunities to the world – from revolutionizing healthcare to transforming education – but it has also unleashed a darker side that experts now describe as one of the fastest-growing threats to children worldwide. According to a new report by the Childlight Global Child Safety Institute, cases of AI-generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM), including deepfakes that digitally place children’s faces onto explicit adult images, have skyrocketed in recent years, prompting urgent calls for stronger international safeguards and accountability.

The numbers are staggering. Reports to the US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) of AI-generated abuse content soared from just 4,700 in 2023 to over 67,000 in 2024 – an increase of more than 1,300 percent in a single year. The report estimates that nearly 15 million children worldwide have been subjected to online sexual coercion or grooming, with about one in seven targeted within the last twelve months alone.

“This is not just an emerging threat – it’s a crisis that’s already here,” said Catherine Chen, executive director at Childlight. “AI has made it alarmingly easy for offenders to create realistic fake images and videos that exploit children, often without the child’s knowledge or consent. The harm is both immediate and long-lasting.”

Deepfake technology, powered by machine learning algorithms, allows users to create hyper-realistic images and videos by superimposing a person’s face onto another body. While originally developed for entertainment and film production, the same technology has been repurposed for malicious use – particularly for sexual exploitation.

Perpetrators now use publicly available photos of children, often taken from social........

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