EU lawmakers from left to right voted by landslide to criminalise AI-generated child abuse images. The sweeping law also tackles grooming, livestreaming, sextortion and age of consent,  aiming to close loopholes and protect children across the EU.

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The European Parliament has adopted new legislation to criminalise the production, viewing, and creation of tools for AI-generated child sexual abuse material, equating it with real child abuse content. Lawmakers stressed the need to update laws to address the challenges posed by artificial intelligence, citing a significant rise in online sexual abuse reports over the past decade.

The proposed law also seeks to toughen penalties, abolish statutes of limitations for these crimes, and expand protections for victims. The legislation will now proceed to discussions with the EU Council, where member states will consider its adoption.

EU Parliament to criminalise AI-generated child abuse material

Adapting European legislation to new technologies to combat child sexual abuse. This is the trust of the text adopted by the European Parliament on Tuesday. For MEPs, this update is essential to meet the challenges posed by artificial intelligence, stresses the reporter of the text. Child sexual abuse material generated by AI will be treated in exactly the same way as real child sexual abuse material. We will have a criminalization of the production of it, of the viewing of it, of the creation of the tools to make it. All this will be treated in exactly the same way as if it were real child sexual abuse material because we know that these models, first of all, they need to train on real child sexual abuse material. And secondly, we see that using AI child sexual abuse material is a very small step to actually moving on to real child sexual abuse. To underline the scale of the online phenomenon, the MEP refers to data from the U.S. National Center on Missing and Exploited Children. One million reports of online sexual abuse were recorded in 2010. Thirteen years later, the center had recorded 36 million reports. MEPs are also proposing to toughen penalties for this crime. They also want to abolish the statute of limitations. We notice that for many victims of child abuse, only at a later stage in life, they will be ready to, for instance, file charges against their abusers. And in many member states, we already see that by the time these victims are ready to do so, the time has run out and they can't get justice anymore. And the parliament today will send a clear signal that for us, for victims of child sexual abuse, justice cannot simply run out on a deadline. They will always be able to get justice done. This vote is only the first step. Discussions must now take place with the council, the institution representing the member states. The text reporter hopes that the 27 ministers will adopt the same ambition as the MEPs.

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EU Parliament to criminalise AI-generated child abuse material

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