Get ready for the AI crimewave: Deepfakes, sextortion and child abuse are only the beginning
The NSPCC has reported a startling 36% increase in online child sexual abuse in the last year, including a rise in the number of children being blackmailed by online predators with explicit, AI-generated images. It follows official advice given to schools to remove photographs of pupils from their websites, after blackmailers sent vile sexualised deepfakes of real children to an unnamed secondary school in the U.K.
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Cases like these are on the rise and point towards the same thing: an AI crimewave.
As a criminal defence solicitor specialising in sexual offences, I have already seen dozens of cases involving artificial intelligence (AI) and AI-generated imagery since these tools became mainstream three years ago.
Overwhelmingly, these relate to child sexual abuse and indecent images offences, with the alleged perpetrators ranging from naive teenagers generating images of teachers and classmates to dangerous predatory gangs.
When I began practice 20 years ago, internet crime constituted just a fraction of crime overall. Now, online offending is by far the most common category of sex crime, vastly outpacing offences like rape and sexual assault. Convictions for internet grooming and indecent images offences are rising exponentially but still pale in comparison to the number of crimes actually being committed.
AI will do what the internet did to sex crime 15 years ago and multiply the problem hundredfold. In my view, AI-related offending will soon become the most common type of crime committed, ranging from child sexual abuse and ‘sextortion’ to fraud, identity theft, and a multitude of other offences that do not yet exist. This crimewave has already started and will only get worse as the accessibility and efficiency of these powerful platforms grows.
In response to this technology, the government has clamoured to introduce new laws that seek to regulate AI proprietors, ban ‘nudify’ apps, and criminalise the generation of sexualised deepfakes.
Unfortunately, this has failed to keep pace with the rate of technological change, and the authorities are therefore condemned to keep playing catch-up.
There is mounting evidence that many criminals are accessing underground AI platforms through the dark web. Indeed, I expect that we will soon see the emergence of highly lucrative criminal networks dealing exclusively in the generation and sale of deepfaked child sex abuse imagery.
Perhaps more concerning is the mainstreaming of AI-powered ‘smart’ glasses and similar devices, which will allow any predator, stalker or curious teenage boy to nudify a stranger on the street in real time - without them ever knowing.
It is a tragic fact that any ordinary image of a child can now be manipulated into realistic sexual material, without the subject or their parents ever being aware that an image has been created.
Social media has attuned us to share every aspect of our lives, but every photograph we share can now be accessed and doctored by a man in his bedroom halfway across the globe.
We are on the precipice of a whole new world and must radically rethink what we do online if we want to protect ourselves from a whole new world of dangers.
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Marcus Johnstone is a criminal defence solicitor of over 20 years and the managing director of PCD Solicitors, a nationwide criminal defence firm specialising in online and AI-related sexual offences.
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