This week the IWF released new figures on child self-reported deepfake abuse. This is what to do if you child or student says an image isn’t real.

The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) and Childline released their latest Report Remove figures for the past six months last week. It is a service in the UK that lets under eighteens flag sexual images or videos of themselves and get them taken down. The sobering numbers that have been reported are that 420 of those reports are deepfaked images that were manipulated or generated by AI. That equates to 420 young people who have seen images of their face, on a body that was not theirs, in a situation that never happened in images they never consented to. 420 in six months is already higher than the total for the whole of 2025.

The IWF’s chief technology officer said most of the manipulated images they had requests for help to remove surpass the criminal threshold for CSAM under UK law.  Some children have been targeted for sexual extortion with images they never took. Some of the cases described in the report involve girls who were scraped from  an ordinary school photo.

In one recent international study across eleven countries, at least 1.2million children described having their images manipulated into sexually explicit deepfakes in the past year. During filming of ‘Role of a lifetime” on the ABC. I screenshot a photo of myself on Instagram, searched for a nudify app and created a totally naked deepfake of myself in under 3 mins. Poor Kate Ritchie burst into tears with the overwhelm of fully understanding just how easily this can happen to our kids.

How the harm shows up:

·       Ordinary photo taken from a public profile. Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, school website, sports club roster.

·       Fed into a nudify or generative AI app. The apps are widely available. Some are ad-supported and served on major platforms.

·       The resulting image is used for social humiliation. A shared group chat. A screenshot posted in a Discord server. A tagged post.

·       Or the image is used for sextortion. The child is told to pay, to share a real image, or to keep talking, or the fake image will be sent to family and school.

·       Or the image is uploaded to a “leak” site or an image board. These sites host manipulated images alongside real ones. Removal requires reporting.

·       The child recognises their own face and does not recognise their own body. This is a specific, disorienting form of shock. Adults should expect it.

·       The child does not tell anyone. Shame does not care whether the image was ever real. That is the whole harm.

·       The child tells a peer, who tells another peer, who tells no adult. The information ends up circulating inside the year group without any adult knowing.

·       Or the child tells one adult, who reacts badly. This is the intervention point every family and school can prepare for.

·       Or the child comes forward, is believed, and the image is removed within days. That is the outcome this cheat sheet is trying to make ordinary.

The tools are cheap and even though many have been banned they are still out there and pop up all the time so it is near impossible to shut down.

Here is what to do if it happens to your child or student:

Please breathe. If a child comes to you and says “there is a picture of me and it isn’t real” believe them. The first five minutes is the most important. They do not have to share a photo for a deepfake image to be created of them. It could come from your public social media, a school, sports club, dance class or a friends page.

Screenshot the URL of where the image hosted, not the image itself. Do not delete anything as it may be needed for evidence. Sit next to them while you do this.

In the United Kingdom, open Report Remove together at childline.org.uk and choose the “I think this has been faked or made by AI” option. In Australia, escalate to the eSafety Commissioner.

In the United States, use the NCMEC CyberTipline and Take It Down. If your child is being blackmailed with the image, do not pay. Save messages. Report to the  police. Contact your school. Nine times in ten the image can come off the internet if it is reported quickly and hashed.

Small things you can do together. None of these require your child to give anything up.

·       Say this - “The picture is not the whole of you. It is a screenshot of your face and someone else’s cruelty. We can take it down. Let us look at how, together, before you ever need it.”Show them Report Remove exists. Not because they might need it. Because the twelve year old in your kitchen should know the service is there before the day it might be relevant. Open the Childline page together. Look at the tickbox that says “I think this has been faked or made by AI”.

·       Show them Take It Down and StopNCII too. Global. Free. Anonymous.

·       Have a “no matter what” conversation. Not once. Term after term. “If there is ever a picture of you, real or not, that someone is using against you, I want to know. I will not be angry. I will not take your phone. I will help you get it taken down. That is the deal.”

·       Do a fifteen minute audit of their public photos and your, with them. Not to lock everything down. To notice what is out there. School photo pages, sports team posts, tagged posts on friends’ accounts. Ask them what they want visible.

·       Set the family rule about tagging. If a friend or parent posts a photo of them, they get to ask for it to come down. Everyone practises the ask.

·       Save the numbers together. In their phone. Not just yours.

Your job is to always be the adult a child feels safe to come to. Please make sure they know they can. Everything else, we can help with.