London: Children in the UK are increasingly reporting explicit deepfake images created using artificial intelligence, prompting renewed warnings about the risks posed by widely available AI image-generation and ‘nudification’ tools.
Report Remove, a service that helps children have intimate images removed from the internet, received 420 reports from under-18s during the first six months of 2026 involving images they believed had been digitally manipulated or fabricated. The figure has already surpassed the 397 reports recorded throughout 2025.
The service is operated by the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) in partnership with the NSPCC. The growing number of reports highlights concerns that advances in AI are making it increasingly easy to manipulate ordinary photographs of children and create deepfake images without their knowledge or consent.
Dan Sexton, Chief Technology Officer at the IWF, warned that even innocent photographs posted online can potentially be misused. Report Remove has introduced a dedicated option on its reporting form allowing children to identify material they believe has been created using deepfake technology.
The IWF said that the most manipulated-image reports received by Report Remove during 2025 and 2026 were serious enough to meet the threshold for Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM).
AI-generated child sexual abuse material is illegal in the UK, while legislation also prohibits adapting AI models to produce such material or distributing models designed for that purpose.
The growing threat has also raised concerns about sextortion, in which perpetrators threaten victims with the release of fake or intimate images unless they provide money or comply with further demands.
Report Remove allows children to report intimate images or videos anonymously. Submitted material can be converted into a digital fingerprint, known as a hash, which can be shared with major technology platforms to help identify and remove the content or prevent it from being uploaded again.
Online safety experts are urging technology companies to introduce stronger safeguards into AI products to prevent their misuse. The NSPCC has also called for greater responsibility from technology providers as children increasingly become targets of AI-enabled abuse.
The latest warnings follow advice from the UK National Crime Agency and IWF encouraging parents and guardians to limit the public availability of identifiable photographs of children online. Parents have been advised to use private social media settings and restricted sharing options.
Schools have also been urged to reconsider publishing identifiable images of pupils on websites and social media following cases in which criminals reportedly collected publicly available photographs and manipulated them using AI.
The growing number of reports highlights the wider threat of deepfake images in the digital age, where an ordinary photograph shared online can potentially be manipulated without the knowledge or consent of the person pictured.
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