The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), a prominent U.S. organization focused on addressing child sexual abuse, released its annual CyberTipline report on Tuesday, revealing a concerning rise in online child sexual exploitation. According to the report, instances of reported abuse rose by over 12% in 2023, totalling more than 36.2 million reports. A significant portion of these reports pertained to child sexual abuse material (CSAM), including photos and videos, with an observed increase in cases of financial sexual extortion, where predators demand money after deceiving children into sending explicit images or videos.
The report highlighted a troubling trend involving artificial intelligence in the production of CSAM. The NCMEC received around 4,700 reports concerning AI-generated images or videos depicting child sexual exploitation—a new category they began tracking in 2023.
“The NCMEC is deeply concerned about this quickly growing trend, as bad actors can use artificial intelligence to create deepfaked sexually explicit images or videos based on any photograph of a real child or generate CSAM depicting computer-generated children engaged in graphic sexual acts,” the NCMEC stated.
The organization also emphasized the emotional impact on the children and families involved in these AI-generated cases, noting, “For the children seen in deepfakes and their families, it is devastating.” Moreover, the use of AI to generate such content complicates efforts to identify actual victims of child abuse. In the United States, creating visual depictions of minors in sexually explicit conduct is illegal and constitutes a federal crime, a Massachusetts-based Department of Justice prosecutor confirmed.
In total, the CyberTipline received more than 35.9 million reports referring to suspected CSAM, with the vast majority of content being uploaded from outside the U.S. Law enforcement in the U.S. was alerted to approximately 1.1 million of these reports, with 63,892 being classified as urgent or involving a child in imminent danger.
The report also noted a significant increase in reports of online enticement, which surged 300% from the previous year to 186,000 reports. Enticement typically involves an individual attempting to commit a sexual offence or abduction by communicating online with someone they believe to be a child.
The platform contributing the highest number of cybertips was Facebook, with over 17.8 million reports, followed by Meta’s Instagram and WhatsApp, Google, Snapchat, TikTok, and Twitter.
Out of 1,600 global companies registered with the cybertip reporting program, only 245 submitted reports to the NCMEC. The report criticized the gap between the volume and the quality of reports, indicating that many are unusable for legal action without additional human verification, a factor that can prevent timely police intervention.
“The relatively low number of reporting companies and the poor quality of many reports marks the continued need for action from Congress and the global tech community,” the NCMEC report states, calling for improved compliance and report quality.
