The first victim, now 33, said he had dreamt of becoming a dancer when he met de Roo aged 14. He had hoped the artist would guide him after growing up with a depressive mother and absent father. Instead the artist groomed him, the investigation showed.
"This 'AI slop' harms children's development by distorting their sense of reality, overwhelming their learning processes and hijacking their attention, thereby extending time online and displacing offline activities necessary for their healthy development."
Wenzlau will need to give his probation officer with any passwords for electronic devices when they check to ensure he doesn't contact minors. The plea bargain also requires Wenzlau's probation officer to approve anytime Wenzlau wants to use the internet, according to court records. Wenzlau also has to keep his browsing history for at least 4 weeks.
The Molly Rose Foundation (MRF) said online networks linked to a global ecosystem labelled the Com were carrying out extreme exploitation, cyberbullying, violence and abuse and called for a coordinated global response from governments, regulators, law enforcement and tech companies. The warning follows the publication of a report by the online risk consultancy Resolver in partnership with the MRF, which was founded by the family of Molly Russell, a British teenager who killed herself in 2017 after viewing harmful content online.
At least 14 boys aged 14 to 17 were allegedly lured into Meyers' scheme to send him nude photos and sex videos, which he used to blackmail the minors. Meyers was charged with trafficking in minors, sexual extortion, unlawful contact with a minor, distribution of child sexual abuse material, criminal use of a communication facility, and more following his arrest.
The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) says its analysts have discovered "criminal imagery" of girls aged between 11 and 13 which "appears to have been created" using Grok. The AI tool is owned by Elon Musk's firm xAI. It can be accessed either through its website and app, or through the social media platform X. The IWF said it found "sexualised and topless imagery of girls" on a "dark web forum" in which users claimed they used Grok to create the imagery.
Since July last year, visitors to adult sites have had to verify that they are over 18 either by providing credit card details, uploading a picture of their ID, or using a selfie to estimate their age. While these rules are intended to make it harder for under-18s to see explicit material, Aylo claims they have 'diverted traffic to darker, unregulated corners of the internet'. As a result, it says it has 'not achieved its goal of protecting minors'.
A man who threatened to rape a teenage girl and encouraged her to self-harm has been jailed. Shabaz Khokar, 24, from London, sent the threat to the victim in Staffordshire via social media, along with images of train tickets he booked to travel to her home. He was arrested at a railway station in the county in August when police were alerted.