"Becky Riggs, the acting chief constable of Staffordshire police, called for tech companies to use AI tools to automatically prevent indecent pictures from being uploaded and shared on their sites. Riggs, who is the National Police Chiefs' Council lead for child protection and abuse, said: I know that these platforms, with the technology that's out there, could prevent these harms from occurring in the first instance."
"Police statistics show that 122,768 child sexual exploitation offences in England and Wales were recorded in 2024, an increase of 6% on the previous year. Child sexual exploitation and abuse online increased by 26%, with 51,672 crimes recorded, which represents 42% of the total. Half the crimes were child-on-child, committed by children aged 10-17, and within this group the most common crime was sharing indecent imagery (64%)."
"Gareth Edwards, the head of the vulnerability knowledge and practice programme at the National Centre for Violence Against Women and Girls and Public Protection, said online crimes were the fastest-growing threat but it is difficult to establish whether the rise was due to increased reporting from platforms in anticipation of the Online Safety Act coming into force this year, or if the crimes were becoming more prevalent."
Online child sexual exploitation and abuse in England and Wales rose sharply, with online offences up 26% to 51,672 and 122,768 total child sexual exploitation offences recorded in 2024, a 6% increase. Half of online offences were committed by children aged 10–17, with sharing indecent imagery the most common (64%). Police leaders called on social media companies to deploy AI tools and build safety protections into devices and platforms to stop indecent images being uploaded and shared. Experts cautioned the rise may reflect increased platform reporting ahead of the Online Safety Act or a genuine increase, and identified sextortion as an emerging threat.
Read at www.theguardian.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]