Artificial intelligence is already being used to create child sexual abuse material, automate grooming, and spread abuse material. The same technology could also be critical for finding victims, identifying perpetrators, and stopping the spread of that material. In a new report, World Childhood Foundation and ChildX point to a growing accountability gap: technology is racing ahead while legislation, platforms, and authorities are failing to keep pace.
The report — “Technology is cool, but you can tell the people running it can’t keep up” — is based on a literature review, expert interviews, and focus groups with children and young people. It shows how AI is already changing the conditions for both perpetrators and those working to protect children.
With the help of AI, perpetrators can create manipulated nude images, generate new abuse material, tailor grooming to individual children, and use fake identities or relationships to gain children’s trust. At the same time, AI is now being used to detect known abuse material, identify risk behaviors, analyze large data sets, and reduce the psychological burden on professionals who review such material.
Children Sound the Alarm on AI — Adults Can’t Keep Up
Children in the report’s focus groups describe the gap between their digital reality and adult responsibility in their own words: “Technology is cool, but you can tell the people running it can’t keep up.” This gap is particularly visible in how sexually exploitative and manipulated images have already become part of young people’s everyday lives: “People aren’t even shocked by it anymore. They’ve gotten used to it. They’ve gotten used to the fact that this person is spreading fake pictures of someone.”
The report highlights three areas in particular where action is needed: modernized and technology-neutral legislation, long-term investment in AI tools for law enforcement and support services, and clearer requirements for platforms to prevent, detect, and respond to child sexual abuse online.
Children and young people themselves are calling for better age verification, human moderation, clearer rules, and safe digital support options when something has happened.
Childhood and ChildX argue that Sweden must now take clearer responsibility for ensuring that child protection develops at the same pace as technology. Legislation must covers AI-generated and manipulated sexually exploitative images of children, ban harmful features that enable such manipulations, invest in AI tools to detect abuse and identify victims, establish clearer requirements for platform safety and human moderation, and strengthen the knowledge of professionals who work with children.
Read the full report here (in Swedish).
