Tech Desk 
Feb 02, 2025
In a remarkable development aimed at reining in the use of technologies like generative artificial intelligence (AI), Britain has announced to criminalise using AI to create and share inappropriate content containing child abuse.
It emerged on Saturday that the UK will become the first country to undertake such measures to criminalise AI sexual abuse, ensuring children's safety and the establishment of ethical norms for content production leveraging technology.
As per the offences impending to take effect, possessing, taking, making, showing or disseminating explicit images of children will be made a crime in England and Wales. The new rules are aimed at reducing the use of AI to "nudeify" real-life images of children.
The development coincides with a rapid surge in the abuse of AI to create inappropriate material containing Pedophilia or similar sorts of materials, as reported by Reuters.
According to the Internet Watch Foundation, reports of generating such explicitly indecent content rose by nearly 500% in 2024.
"We know that sick predators' activities online often lead to them carrying out the most horrific abuse in person. It is vital that we tackle child sexual abuse online as well as offline so we can better protect the public from new and emerging crimes," said Yvette Cooper, Britain's interior minister.
The new offences will also target those running websites that distribute and promote content with child sexual abuse, and the UK government is also expected to allow authorities to confiscate perpetrators' devices for the sake of investigation.
