Virtual Global Taskforce declares fight against child abuse at tipping point due to AI, encryption

Children are at a new risk of being preyed on by pedophiles, with the fight against child abuse had reached a “tipping point”.

A global task force has declared artificial intelligence is putting children at risk of being preyed on by pedophiles, saying the fight against child abuse had reached a “tipping point”.

The shocking revelation was made by the Virtual Global Taskforce – an agency made up of several international agencies, including Australian Federal Police – which recently met to discuss how the fight against child exploitation is about to become harder.

One of those representatives, AFP Human Exploitation Commander Helen Schneider said the rollout of end-to-end encryption on social media and artificial intelligence (AI) generators were creating roadblocks in the fight to save kids from harm.

“We are at that tipping point right now, we need to make sure we stay really involved,” Ms Schneider said.

AFP Commander Helen Schneider.

The rapid evolution of AI meant pedophiles were using it in many different ways, including the mass creation of child exploitation material with both fake images and those which include real, innocent children.

Ms Schneider said the generated images often tied up victim identification specialists in trying to determine whether the image was real or AI-generated.

“The challenge for us is making sure that we are identifying the children and removing them from harm, and AI generators can derail us a bit … it means children might sit in harmful situations for longer.”

Ms Schneider said there was also a risk that AI would play a huge role in normalising offender behaviour and create a permissive environment for perpetrators.

“Essentially there is a risk that people using AI tools might escalate their behaviour to target real children, and move toward contact offending.”

Another threat was the recent rollout of end-to-end encryption on Facebook Messenger, which Ms Schneider said will protect offenders and limit what police can access.

“End-to-end encryption does have its purposes, but of course the issue for us is we think there is that balance to be struck with the safety of children online.

The task force determined AI is making the fight against child abuse even harder.

“With our global law enforcement partners … there’s a real risk for us if we go down a path where we can’t investigate matters where end-to-end inhibits information.

“It will prevent us from then removing children from harm and locating offenders.”

Ms Schneider said child abuse was happening all around us, and it was an issue everyone needed to help prevent.

“Offenders do gravitate to new technology quite quickly.

“It’s a double-edge sword … technology can be used for good and bad, but it’s about finding and realising the kind of technology to protect the community as well.”

Originally published as Virtual Global Taskforce declares fight against child abuse at tipping point due to AI, encryption