The Child Exploitation Operations team's customs director, Simon Peterson, revealed a worrying increase in material from child sexual exploitation digitally generated in New Zealand.
As reported by Stuff, three government agencies, including customs, police and the Department of Home Affairs (DIA), confirmed having found objectionable content generated by Artificial Intelligence in the country, after inquiries arising from similar cases in other countries places.
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According to Peterson, Customs recently intercepted a game whose content depicted child sexual abuse, heightening concerns about the use of AI in this context. He pointed out that while the concept of such practices is not new, AI's ability to produce ever more realistic images makes the situation more problematic and worrying.
Stuart Mills, who is manager of interception and technology operations and detective inspector, expressed his concern about the misuse of artificial intelligence to generate images that symbolize the sexual abuse of minors.
"This is an issue facing law enforcement internationally," said the detective.
We have seized a substantial backlog of material involving the sexual exploitation of children, including digitally produced images,” stated a DIA representative.
According to him, digitally created abuse material has been confiscated by customs since the early 2000s, traditionally using tools such as Photoshop. However, content produced “entirely by AI” is currently being intercepted.
He clarifies that almost a quarter of the currently apprehended content is produced digitally.
“The difficulty with the AI platform is its universal accessibility. I would like to state that we are extremely adept at spotting fakes, however AI can be very convincing,” he stated. "It's possible that someone is using AI to create something and we can't tell the difference," he added.
He reiterated that AI is just the latest technological frontier being invaded by pedophiles, following the same pattern as the internet and later social media.
“It made child abuse more available. A frightening prospect,” continued the expert. “Aside from these images being shared, sold or traded, AI-generated images are likely to be being used by criminals to manipulate and coerce young victims online in cases of offenses such as sextortion,” finished.
