In a recent Guardian interview, actress Mara Wilson, beloved for her work as a child actress in movies such as “Matilda,” and “Mrs. Doubtfire,” shared a modern horror story. She discovered that her likeness when she was a child had been used to create AI-generated child sexual abuse material (AIG-CSAM). Her story is deeply unsettling, not because she is famous, but because of the dangerous truth it reveals. In the age of AI, predators no longer need direct access to a child to exploit them.
As VP of Cyber at Our Rescue, I’ve seen firsthand that predators don’t need to “groom” a child or even make contact to sexually exploit them. They don’t need to meet them in person or join their chat rooms. They only need a single image. While parents still need to worry about real-world and online threats, in the darkest corners of the internet lurks a silent predator, sexually exploiting children through AI image generation while remaining invisible to parents and children.
For years, we were warned about strangers and risky online interactions. But AI has shifted the threat. Now, one innocent photo from a social media account, a school website, or a family album can be manipulated into a convincing depiction of sexual abuse using tools that are widely available. The source image doesn’t have to be provocative… it just has to exist. AI can remove clothing, change poses, or even create short videos where a child is made to perform abhorrent acts.
How Easy is to Manipulate Just One Image?
This may be a trivial example, but it highlights my case and point. Here I am in 2009, wearing a black T-shirt at the top of a 14,000 summit in Colorado. The picture is over 15 years old and of low quality. It’s the kind of innocent picture commonly shared on social media. I can use this image of myself as a model, and with the right AI tools, I can create new imagery with different clothing, poses, scenes and people. Only one picture is real. The rest are entirely synthetic. While these examples are all harmless, similar tools and techniques are used by predators to create countless explicit images and even videos using the likeness of the targeted child obtained from a single, innocent picture.
This is the original image. But with that one image, look what AI can do.
Exploitation Without Contact
This is the new danger: harm occurs without the child ever knowing. There are no warning signs for them to recognize and no opportunity for them to ask for help. It happens in the shadows, using content that was only meant to capture a “normal” moment of life.
Common AI image generation tools baked into ChatGPT, Grok, Gemini, and others have harmful image protections in place. But predators, communicating over illicit message boards and dark web groups, teach each other how to create explicit imagery with advanced technical AI image generation tools capable of running entirely autonomously without any oversight or guardrail protections.
What Parents Can Do Right Now
Parents don’t need to become technologists to reduce risk, but they do need to be thoughtful and intentional, especially with personal pictures shared online. Here are a few suggestions to help protect your family.
- Audit Privacy: Keep children’s accounts private and recheck settings often.
- Use Generic Profiles Pictures: Use non-identifying images for public-facing profile pictures or banners.
- Think Before Posting: Be cautious with photos showing faces, school names, or daily routines.
- Vetting “Friends”: Review who has access to your family’s private life; predators are often unassuming and may be hiding among “friends” you have seen or spoken to in years. Small, trusted circles are much safer than large collections of unvetted acquaintances.
- Restrict Resharing: Use platform tools to stop well-meaning friends from reposting your private photos publicly.
- Delay the Digital Dive: Avoid building a public digital history for your child or giving them access to online communication platforms until they are old enough to understand the risks.
Online safety begins offline. It starts with strong relationships and open conversations about how technology can be misused. Technology continues to change the rules of the game. Our job isn’t to panic, but to pause and protect.
At Our Rescue, we are committed to remaining on the cutting edge of emerging online threats to help you and your family stay safe both online and in the real world.
To learn more, I would invite every family to visit here to begin the conversation.
– John Trenary, Our Rescue Vice President of Cyber Operations
