Predators using AI 'nudify' apps to strip clothes off children

Sexual predators are using artificial intelligence to 'nudify' children in family photos taken from social media, it has been revealed. 

Tens of millions of people are using the AI-powered apps which digitally alter the images to make children appear naked using deep-learning algorithms.

These algorithms are trained on existing images of children which allows them to overlay realistic images of nude body parts, regardless of whether the photographed person is clothed. 

The Internet Watch Foundation, an organisation that works to prevent child abuse online, has noted a six per cent increase in reports of AI-generated child sexual abuse material compared to last year. 

And a shocking 99 per cent of the content used was taken from public areas of the internet such as social media pages. 

In total, the organisation found 20,254 AI-generated images of children in one month on a dark-web forum. 

Catherine Brown, chairwoman of the IWF, told The Times: 'In the last few months we have really seen AI image-generators become much more sophisticated, to the point where almost anyone can make or manipulate lifelike sexual or nude imagery of children at the click of a button.

'So-called nudifying apps have increased the ease with which this imagery can be made, and we have seen what happens when this technology is abused. 

'It can be used by predators to groom, entrap and ensnare them into cycles of online sexual abuse.'

MPs are now pushing the government to ban the platforms in a campaign to tackle deepfake content. 

Justice minister Alex Davies-Jones has called for all sexually explicit deepfakes to be made illegal. 

While the creation of such images of children is already against the law, the apps and websites used to create the content have not been banned.  

It comes as head teachers have said they are struggling to keep on top of the technology being used to abuse pupils. 

One head teacher said female students had been impacted by deepfake nudes taken from their social media platforms. 

Last month a budding filmmaker who used AI to make indecent images of children was jailed for 18 years – as footage emerged of him admitting to having a 'warped' mind.

Hugh Nelson said he was providing a 'valuable service' by taking 'commissions' from relatives and family friends of youngsters - charging them £80 to turn a real image of a child into a 3D 'character' being physically and sexually abused.

The 27-year-old was shown on camera confessing to detectives that his actions had been 'absolutely grotesque' after being confronted with evidence about his 'sick' deepfake factory.

Operating from his family home near Bolton, Nelson used AI technology to manipulate innocent photographs of real children as young as four into scenes of nudity, rape and torture - making around £5,000 but giving out others for free.

In one vile message he boasted to the officer that images he had created included 'beatings, smotherings, hangings, drownings, beheadings, necro, beast, the list goes on' – accompanied by a laughing emoji.

Passing sentence, Recorder Walsh said: 'These harrowing and sickening images were forwarded by you for financial gain. So far as you were concerned the undercover officer was just another anonymous customer.

'You had no regard to or concern for the potential consequences of the distribution of the images that you had created.

'You told the undercover officer that ''most of the people who commission me don't/can't f*** their nieces, daughters etc so the way I see it is I provide a valuable service''.'