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The amount of deepfake and AI-generated child abuse images online is doubling every six months, a National Crime Agency director has warned.
The next five years will see ‘significant increases’ in the creation of indecent images using artificial intelligence, Alex Murray said.
The images are generated by software which learns from photos and videos of real child abuse, Mr Murray, who is also the AI lead for the National Police Chiefs’ Council, added.
‘What we are seeing at the moment is on a six-month basis the amount of deepfake images of child abuse is doubling on the internet,’ he said.
‘So this means that we as police must move very fast in this space.’
Artificially-generated indecent images are illegal in the same way as those involving real children.
And it is a misconception that software-generated abuse imagery does not affect real victims, Mr Murray said.
‘We have got to remember …