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Tech firms and child safety organizations will receive authority to evaluate whether artificial intelligence systems can produce child abuse material under recently introduced UK laws.

Substantial Increase in AI-Generated Harmful Content

The announcement coincided with findings from a protection monitoring body showing that cases of AI-generated child sexual abuse material have more than doubled in the last twelve months, rising from 199 in 2024 to 426 in 2025.

Updated Legal Framework

Under the changes, the authorities will permit designated AI developers and child safety groups to examine AI systems – the underlying systems for chatbots and visual AI tools – and ensure they have sufficient safeguards to prevent them from producing depictions of child exploitation.

"Fundamentally about preventing abuse before it happens," stated the minister for AI and online safety, noting: "Specialists, under strict protocols, can now detect the risk in AI systems early."

Tackling Regulatory Challenges

The amendments have been implemented because it is illegal to create and own CSAM, meaning that AI creators and others cannot generate such images as part of a evaluation regime. Previously, officials had to wait until AI-generated CSAM was published online before dealing with it.

This law is aimed at averting that issue by helping to stop the creation of those images at source.

Legislative Structure

The changes are being added by the government as modifications to the crime and policing bill, which is also implementing a prohibition on possessing, producing or distributing AI models designed to create child sexual abuse material.

Real-World Impact

This week, the official visited the London base of a children's helpline and heard a mock-up call to advisors featuring a account of AI-based exploitation. The call depicted a teenager requesting help after being blackmailed using a sexualised deepfake of himself, constructed using AI.

"When I learn about children facing blackmail online, it is a source of intense anger in me and rightful concern amongst parents," he said.

Alarming Statistics

A prominent online safety organization stated that instances of AI-generated exploitation content – such as webpages that may include multiple files – had significantly increased so far this year.

Cases of category A material – the gravest form of exploitation – rose from 2,621 visual files to 3,086.

• Female children were overwhelmingly targeted, accounting for 94% of illegal AI images in 2025
• Portrayals of infants to toddlers rose from five in 2024 to 92 in 2025

Industry Response

The law change could "constitute a vital step to ensure AI tools are safe before they are launched," commented the chief executive of the online safety foundation.

"Artificial intelligence systems have made it so survivors can be targeted repeatedly with just a simple actions, providing criminals the capability to make possibly endless quantities of advanced, lifelike child sexual abuse material," she added. "Material which further exploits survivors' suffering, and makes young people, particularly female children, less safe on and off line."

Support Interaction Data

The children's helpline also published information of counselling interactions where AI has been referenced. AI-related harms mentioned in the sessions comprise:

• Employing AI to evaluate weight, body and appearance
• Chatbots dissuading young people from consulting safe adults about abuse
• Being bullied online with AI-generated content
• Digital blackmail using AI-faked images

Between April and September this year, the helpline conducted 367 support sessions where AI, conversational AI and related terms were mentioned, significantly more as many as in the same period last year.

Half of the mentions of AI in the 2025 sessions were connected with psychological wellbeing and wellbeing, including using AI assistants for support and AI therapeutic applications.