Offences against Children: Artificial Intelligence

(asked on 30th November 2023) - View Source

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent steps his Department has taken to tackle AI-generated (a) child abuse and (b) pornography images online.


Answered by
Laura Farris Portrait
Laura Farris
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice) (jointly with Home Office)
This question was answered on 14th December 2023

The Government remains firmly committed to tackling all forms of child sexual abuse online and in our communities across the UK and internationally.

The law in the UK is very clear with regards to production of child sexual abuse material. It is an offence to produce, store, share or search for any material that contains or depicts child sexual abuse, regardless of whether the material depicts a ‘real’ child or not. This prohibition also includes pseudo-imagery that may have been computer-generated.

Home Office investment supports the National Crime Agency to use its unique capabilities to disrupt the highest harm offenders, safeguard children and remove the most horrific child sexual abuse material from the internet, including on the dark web.

Furthermore, as part of the Government’s work to tackle child sexual abuse offences, the Government has driven forward the Online Safety Act which puts in place the strongest protections for children and all companies in scope of the legislation will need to tackle child sexual abuse as a priority.

In October, the Home Office, in partnership with the Internet Watch Foundation, hosted an AI Safety Summit event to discuss the growing threat of generative artificial intelligence creating child sexual abuse material. As part of the event, the Home Office issued a joint statement on tackling the proliferation of AI generated Child Sexual Abuse Material, with 33 signatories including tech companies such as Snapchat, TikTok and Stability AI.

On 27 June, the Government announced amendments to the Online Safety Act related to intimate image abuse, based on the recommendations made in the Law Commission’s report. The amendments included offences for the sending, sharing, and threatening to share ‘deepfake’ pornography, as part of a new ‘base offence’ that criminalises someone for sharing an intimate image without consent.

Deepfake material will fall into scope of the illegal content duties where it is linked to a priority offence, for example material that contains an incitement to violence against individuals or extreme or revenge pornographic deepfakes. All services in scope will need to proactively seek out and remove this and other illegal content listed in Schedule 7. They must also prevent their services from being used to facilitate priority offences, including where the targets of these offences are women and girls.

Separate to the Online Safety Act, on 1 December the government announced the terms of reference and the Lead Reviewer for its review of pornography regulation, legislation, and enforcement. The objectives for this Review include assessing the impact that legal pornography, including AI generated pornography has on viewers and whether law enforcement and the criminal justice system have the tools they need to effectively respond to child abuse content on pornographic sites.

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