Headline statistics

Emerging and persistent harms

In 2025, analysts identified several emerging and evolving risks shaping the online child sexual abuse landscape, including the rapid growth of AI-generated CSAM, persistent gendered sexual abuse targeting girls, and the victimisation of older teenagers. These trends highlight how technological change, social dynamics, and criminal exploitation intersect to create new forms of harm online. 

AI-generated child sexual abuse material

We saw a sharp rise in the volume, realism, and severity of AI-generated child sexual abuse videos.

Generative AI tools, including video models, nudification apps, subscription platforms, and agentic AI systems, have lowered technical barriers, enabling offenders with minimal expertise to produce and distribute illegal content at scale. AI is being used to generate synthetic abuse, manipulate images of real children, and produce explicit chats with simulated child characters. Early signs of commercialisation are emerging, with subscription-based services offering tailored content creation.

When AI systems are trained on real victims’ imagery, synthetic material prolongs harm and enables re-victimisation. Some content is used for blackmail or sexually motivated extortion. Open-source AI tools further lower barriers, allowing offenders to adapt and deploy harmful content with minimal oversight.

Frontline observations

Policy overview

Swift action by legislators and technology companies is needed to stop AI technology from being exploited to create child sexual abuse material and to perpetrate violence against women and girls.This includes regulatory requirements to ensure AI products are safe by design, banning nudification apps and tools, and closing legal loopholes to ensure AI generated material is treated the same as other forms of CSAM in jurisdictions beyond the UK.

Gendered sexual harm
(violence against women & girls)

Girls remain disproportionately represented in sexual abuse imagery, both real and AI-generated.

Analysts frequently encounter violent sexualisation, misogynistic framing and degrading scenarios. Voyeuristic and non-consensual material circulates in “exposing” spaces where girls’ bodies are commodified for rating, identification and abusive commentary. AI tools amplify harm by recreating abuse and generating sexualised depictions at scale.

These patterns reflect entrenched gendered sexual violence online, fuelled by societal norms, power imbalances and misogyny. Non-consensual sharing, voyeurism, and AI manipulation strip girls of control over their image, increasing the risk of repeated circulation and re-victimisation.

Older teen victimisation

Older teenagers are increasingly caught in cycles of abuse involving ‘self-generated’ imagery, leaks, AI manipulation and sexual extortion. Boys are disproportionately represented through our child reporting services and in sexually coerced extortion cases.

Images are often self-captured in private settings and later leaked, manipulated or shared under pressure. Once online, content spreads rapidly across platforms, sometimes reaching adult platforms where teens are mistaken for adults. Sextortion cases escalate quickly, with offenders demanding additional images or payments. Some imagery is repackaged into humiliating collages, increasing shame and compliance.

The combination of ‘self-generated’ content, leaks and coercion is creating a fast-growing, interconnected ecosystem of harm. Once shared, images can resurface repeatedly, amplifying distress and risk.

Child sexual abuse material hosting hotspots

A small number of jurisdictions host a disproportionate share of confirmed child sexual abuse material.

A small number of jurisdictions host most confirmed child sexual abuse material URLs, often concentrated in a few high-volume sites. Changes in rankings reflect sites emerging, migrating, or being disrupted. When child sexual abuse material is concentrated on a few high-volume sites in jurisdictions with slower or inconsistent takedown, material remains accessible longer, increasing the risk it will be copied, redistributed, or reposted elsewhere. The UK demonstrates that rapid, collaborative removal is effective and can limit exposure.

Effective child protection therefore depends on faster, more consistent international enforcement approaches, supported by coordinated action across industry and regulatory partners.

Online recidivism & infrastructure evasion

Child sexual abuse material distribution is becoming more resilient and widespread, with offenders exploiting weaknesses across internet infrastructure to evade detection and quickly rebuild operations.

Offenders increasingly rely on image-hosting services to upload large collections of child sexual abuse material, which are then embedded across forums and blogs. Removed content is rapidly reposted to alternative pre-registered domains or reappears under new domain endings (TLD hopping), often featuring the same material and victims. Legitimate platforms are frequently abused, and takedowns targeting only specific URLs remove content temporarily but do not prevent rapid re-uploads, limiting the overall effectiveness of enforcement. 

This adaptive behaviour creates multi-layered resilience, allowing material to persist across the internet. Without coordinated action across registries, registrars, hosting providers, image hosts, and platforms, these distribution pathways remain open, increasing systemic risk.

Together, these measures target domains, hosting infrastructure and access points. However, lasting systemic impact depends on broader industry alignment and shared responsibility.

Member services

Children services

Operational Activity

What we do

Policymakers: Robust child-safety regulation must compel services to prevent, detect, and remove child sexual abuse material, including upload-prevention safeguards, safety-by-design, and coordinated international standards. Urgent implementation closes gaps that allow abuse to persist.

Internet Infrastructure Providers: Companies operating the internet’s core infrastructure, including registries, registrars, hosting providers, filtering companies, search engines and payment providers, should join the IWF. Rapid responses to alerts, proactive blocking tools, and coordinated disruption of redistribution routes help remove child sexual abuse material and limit its spread across the internet’s infrastructure.

Technology Builders: Companies that build platforms, AI systems, and software must ensure their products cannot be misused to generate, manipulate, or distribute child sexual abuse material. Embedding safety-by-design, strong safeguards, and proactive detection, and collaborating with the IWF to share insights and co-develop protective tools, can prevent abuse at scale.

Research partners: We invite researchers and data specialists to share anonymised data, develop analytical tools, and run joint projects. Together, we can identify emerging threats, test interventions, and strengthen evidence-based child protection.