LONDON

Britain will become the first country to introduce laws against AI tools used to generate sexual abuse images, the government announced late on Feb. 1.

The government will make it illegal to possess, create or distribute AI tools designed to generate sexualized images of children, punishable by up to five years in prison, Interior Minister Yvette Cooper revealed.

It will also be illegal to possess AI “pedophile manuals” which teach people how to use AI to sexually abuse children, punishable by up to three years in prison.

“This is a real disturbing phenomenon. Online child sexual abuse material is growing, but also the grooming of children teenagers online. And what’s now happening is that AI is putting this on steroids,” Interior Minister Yvette Cooper told Sky News yesterday.

She said AI tools were making it easier for perpetrators “to groom children, and it’s also meaning that they are manipulating images of children and then using them to draw and to blackmail young people into further abuse.

“It’s just the most vile of crimes,” she added.

The new law would include banning “some of the AI models being used for child abuse,” said the minister.

“Other countries are not yet doing this, but I hope everyone else will follow,” she added.

AI tools are being used to generate child sexual abuse images by “nudeifying” real life images of children or by “stitching the faces of other children onto existing images,” said the government.

The new laws will also criminalize “predators who run websites designed for other pedophiles to share vile child sexual abuse content or advice on how to groom children,” punishable by up to 10 years in prison, said the government.

Cooper told the BBC on Sunday that a recent inquiry had found that around 500,000 children across the U.K. are victims of child abuse of some form each year, “and the online aspect of that is an increasing and growing part of it.”

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