Child Abuse

AI child abuse images spreading, law enforcement racing to stop them

A child psychiatrist who altered a first-day-of-school photo he saw on Facebook to make a group of girls appear nude. A US Army soldier accused of creating images depicting children he knew being sexually abused. A software engineer charged with generating hyper-realistic sexually explicit images of children. Law enforcement agencies across the US are cracking down on a troubling spread of child sexual abuse imagery created through artificial intelligence technology from manipulated photos of real children to graphic depictions of computer-generated kids. ustice Department officials say they're aggressively going after offenders who exploit AI tools, while states are racing to ensure people generating deepfakes and other harmful imagery of kids can be prosecuted under their laws. We've got to signal early and often that it is a crime, that it will be investigated and prosecuted when the evidence supports it, Steven Grocki, who leads the Justice Department's Child Exploitation and .

French authorities issue preliminary charges against Telegram CEO Durov

French authorities handed Telegram CEO Pavel Durov preliminary charges Wednesday for allowing alleged criminal activity on his messaging app, and barred him from leaving France pending further investigation. Durov was detained on Saturday at Le Bourget airport outside Paris as part of a sweeping judicial inquiry opened last month, and released earlier Wednesday after four days of questioning. Investigative judges filed the preliminary charges Wednsday night and ordered him to pay 5 million euros bail and to report to a police station twice a week. Allegations against the Russia-born Durov, who is a French citizen, include that his platform is being used for child sexual abuse material and drug trafficking, and that Telegram refused to share information or documents with investigators when required by law. Durov's arrest in France has caused outrage in Russia, with some government officials calling it politically motivated and proof of the West's double standard on freedom of speech.

Badlapur child abuse: Mob attacks family of accused, vandalises his home

Badlapur sexual abuse incident: A large mob of young men barged into the accused's house, attacking his family and breaking furniture, said neighbours

AI advances fuel rise in child abuse deepfakes, UK safety watchdog warns

The UK-based safety watchdog have observed that most videos found on a dark web forum used by paedophiles are partial deepfakes

Why is author and Nobel laureate Alice Munro in the news? Explained

Alice Munro, celebrated for her literary prowess and awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013, is often regarded as one of the greatest short-story writers. Read on to find out why she is in the

HC notice to Google for blocking account for uploading nude childhood photo

Uploading a nude childhood photo on Google Drive cost a man access to his email account for nearly a year and forced him to knock on the doors of the Gujarat High Court. The high court has issued a notice to Google India Pvt Limited for blocking the email account of the petitioner for "explicit child abuse" after he uploaded on Google Drive a photo of his grandmother bathing him when he was two years old. The court of Justice Vaibhavi D Nanavati on March 15 issued notices to Google, the Central and state governments returnable on March 26. The petitioner, Neel Shukla, a computer engineer, uploaded childhood photographs on Google Drive, including a picture of him being bathed by his grandmother as a toddler. The tech giant blocked Shukla's account in April last year for violating its policy regarding such contents showing "explicit child abuse", his counsel Dipen Desai told the court. Shukla moved the high court on March 12 after the company failed to resolve the issue through its

Meta, X, TikTok CEOs ripped by US senators over child online safety

"These companies must be reined in, or the worst is yet to come," Senator Lindsey Graham, the top Republican on the committee, said

Meta, TikTok & other social media CEOs to testify on child exploitation

Sexual predators. Addictive features. Self-harm and eating disorders. Unrealistic beauty standards. Bullying. These are just some of the issues young people are dealing with on social media - and children's advocates and lawmakers say companies are not doing enough to protect them. On Wednesday, the CEOs of Meta, TikTok, X and other social media companies are testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee about child exploitation on their platforms, as lawmakers, families and advocates are growing increasingly concerned about the effects of social media on young people's lives. While Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is a veteran of congressional hearings since his first one over the Cambridge Analytica privacy debacle in 2018, it will only be the second time for TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew and the first for Linda Yaccarino, the CEO of X. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel and Discord CEO Jason Citron are also scheduled to testify. We understand that they are companies and they have to make profit. But whe

Documents underscore Meta's 'historical reluctance' to protect children

Newly unredacted documents from New Mexico's lawsuit against Meta underscore the company's historical reluctance to keep children safe on its platforms, the complaint says. New Mexico's Attorney General Raul Torrez sued Facebook and Instagram owner Meta in December, saying the company failed to protect young users from exposure to child sexual abuse material and allowed adults to solicit explicit imagery from them. In the passages freshly unredacted from the lawsuit Wednesday, internal employee messages and presentations from 2020 and 2021 show Meta was aware of issues such as adult strangers being able to contact children on Instagram, the sexualization of minors on that platform, and the dangers of its people you may know feature that recommends connections between adults and children. But Meta dragged its feet when it came to addressing the issues, the passages show. Instagram, for instance, began restricting adults' ability to message minors in 2021. One internal document ...

Study shows AI image-generators being trained on explicit pics of children

Hidden inside the foundation of popular artificial intelligence image-generators are thousands of images of child sexual abuse, according to a new report that urges companies to take action to address a harmful flaw in the technology they built. Those same images have made it easier for AI systems to produce realistic and explicit imagery of fake children as well as transform social media photos of fully clothed real teens into nudes, much to the alarm of schools and law enforcement around the world. Until recently, anti-abuse researchers thought the only way that some unchecked AI tools produced abusive imagery of children was by essentially combining what they've learned from two separate buckets of online images - adult pornography and benign photos of kids. But the Stanford Internet Observatory found more than 3,200 images of suspected child sexual abuse in the giant AI database LAION, an index of online images and captions that's been used to train leading AI image-makers such

Australian watchdog fines X $385,000 for not tackling child abuse content

Australia's online safety watchdog said on Monday it had fined X the social media platform formerly known as Twitter 610,500 Australian dollars (USD 385,000) for failing to fully explain how it tackled child sexual exploitation content. Australia's eSafety Commission describes itself as the world's first government agency dedicated to keeping people safe online. The commission issued legal transparency notices early this year to X and other platforms questioning what they were doing to tackle a proliferation of child sexual exploitation, sexual extortion and the livestreaming of child sexual abuse. eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said X and Google had not complied with the notices because both companies had failed to adequately respond to a number of questions. The platform renamed X by its new owner Elon Musk was the worst offender, providing no answers to some questions including how many staff remained on the trust and safety team that worked on preventing harmful and .

Telegram bans 2,114 groups, channels related to child abuse on Oct 6

Mobile messaging platform Telegram has banned 2,114 groups and channels related to child abuse content, according to a Telegram channel 'Stop Child Abuse'. The instant messaging platform is one of three entities to which the government on Friday issued notices to remove child sexual abuse material in India. "2,114 groups and channels related to child abuse banned on October 6. Total this month: 10,312," the update on the channel said. The company did not share the break up of banned groups linked or having an impact on Indian jurisdiction. Minister of State for Electronics and IT, Rajiv Chandrasekhar had warned that if social media intermediaries do not act swiftly, their 'safe harbour' under section 79 of the IT Act would be withdrawn, implying that the platforms can be directly prosecuted under the applicable laws and rules even though the content may have not been uploaded by them. Telegram in response to the notice said it is always committed to upholding legal and ethical ...

'446,000 missing children found since 2015, most reunited with families'

Most of the 4.46 lakh missing children found since 2015 have been reunited with their families, Women and Child Development Minister Smriti Irani said on Saturday. Speaking at the inaugural session of the national annual stakeholders consultation on children in conflict with law, Irani said the children were found through the ministry's Khoya Paya portal, launched in 2015. "Today, we can proudly say that close to 4,46,000 missing children have been found, of which 3,97,530 children have been successfully matched and reunited with their families," she said. Irani said since the amendment of the Juvenile Justice Act in 2021, under which district magistrates instead of courts have been given the responsibility to issue adoption orders, as many as 2,600 children have been adopted. Irani warned stakeholders against profiteering from institutionalising children, saying, "If profit becomes the core of our efforts, then many children will not find the loving homes they deserve." During th

UP launches 'Operation Conviction' for cow slaughter, child abuse cases

'Operation Conviction' will ensure the immediate arrest of criminals, the collection of strong evidence against them, quality investigation, and effective representation of cases in courts

Closely monitoring Guwahati child abuse case: CM Himanta Biswa Sarma

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Monday said he is closely monitoring a case in which a doctor couple was arrested for allegedly sexually abusing children who they claimed were adopted by them. Sarma, while addressing a press conference, said he will write to the Chief Justice of the Gauhati High Court to ensure that justice is delivered within six months. 'I have asked the police to file the chargesheet within 30-45 days. I am monitoring the case on a day-to-day basis," he said. A doctor and his family's domestic help were arrested in Guwahati on Saturday, while his psychiatrist wife, who is frequently seen in local TV channels' talk shows on mental health, was caught on Sunday while trying to flee from the city. The police have slapped various Sections of the IPC along with Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 (POCSO) against the doctor couple and their maid, who has also been arrested. After their arrest, they were produced before the Chief Judicial

UK PM Rishi Sunak creates new taskforce to go after 'vile' child abusers

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Monday vowed to do whatever it takes as he condemned the political correctness which has prevented action against vile criminals behind the sexual abuse of children and young women and launched a new taskforce to go after such gangs. Sunak's announcement comes a day after his Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, said that the perpetrators of such crimes are groups of men, almost all British Pakistani, but that authorities have turned a blind eye to these signs of abuse out of political correctness, out of fear, of being called racists, out of fear, of being called bigoted. Asked about the ethnicity of the criminals during a visit to Rochdale one of the cities with a history of British Pakistani grooming gangs, Sunak told reporters: All forms of child sexual exploitation carried out by whoever are horrific and wrong". "But with the specific issue of grooming gangs, we have had several independent inquiries look at the incidents here in Rochdale, bu

TikTok's moderators still review child abuse despite vow to exit business

The revelations highlight the challenges that social media companies and their content review teams face in protecting their users from extremely disturbing material

Twitter under Musk not doing enough to curb child abuse content: Reports

The New York Times found images containing 10 child abuse victims in 150 instances across multiple accounts on Twitter

UNGA designates Nov 18 as World Day for prevention of child sexual abuse

The resolution invites all member states, relevant organisations of the UN and other international organisations to commemorate this World Day each year in a manner that each considers appropriate

Tamil Nadu Police to assign support person for child abuse victims

Suitable person will be assigned to the children through the Child welfare committees in the concerned districts to support and assist the abused children during investigation and trial