Have we learned our lesson from Social Media?

June 2024

Artificial Intelligence is developing at a meteoric rate. As each day goes by, we are seeing more and more detail in AI generated video's and images. Content is becoming almost seamless and we will very soon get to the point where it will become extremely difficult to differentiate between what is real and what is fake.

At the moment, such 'political satire' content displayed in the video to my most recent Facebook Post would be quite easy to negate. It would not take too long at all to confirm that former President Obama was not walking through a convenience store armed with a knife as depicted in that video!

However, as this technology continues to push into general use, there is a very real threat that anyone on the planet could be compromised or affected by such fake content.

Once again, I need to emphasise I do not intend to frighten my readers or public. This article is not about scaremongering or deriding AI as evil, it is about presenting precise facts about what I am seeing at the coal face of online harm.

I have recently worked directly with two families whose sons took their own lives as a result of being Sextorted for their sexual images. These boys became lost in the overwhelming fear of their images being distributed to family and friends and that fear drove them to make the most terrible of decisions.

We now have AI websites and apps which can generate very clear and utterly believable naked content of anyone! These 'Deep Nudes' are now a very real concern for Australian teens and the worries they are sharing with me is extremely concerning.

The relatively moderate percentage of juvenile males who do share real naked images or video with a scammer is concerning. The impact such crimes have on them and their families is brutal and often life changing. One of the positives (if that is the right word) of juvenile male Sextortion, is it takes time for an offender to coerce a victim to share such content. As such, a scammer quite often has many more misses than they do hits.

Without doubt, whilst trying to be as honest as I can and without causing undue fear, I believe Deep Nude Sextortion over the next 18 months will become the highest rising crime on the planet.

A scammer will no longer need to waste time grooming a possible victim. They will simply trawl a victims social media accounts and download as many of their images and video's as they can. They will then load that content into AI. The software will remove the victims clothing, then generate content of a sexual nature which will be very difficult for a victim to deny as real. Herein lays the fear many Australian school children are now experiencing and expressing to me.

A recent conversation I had with a teenage girl who was the victim of a Deep Nude attack expressed a fear which worried me greatly and broke my heart as a Dad. "Paul, having a fake nude of me going around school is really scary, but what freaks me out the most is if I tell Mum and Dad, they might not believe it is not really me!" How the hell do I deal with that?

Over the next few months, I have no doubt my email inbox and socials notifications are going to be inundated with pleas of help from Australians going through such harms. I am scared, worried I am not prepared to handle what is about to come. But I will try my best to face it head on, because that is what I do.

To my kids;
    1. Please do not panic. Please find the courage to speak to me, your school and your parents if you have been targeted with a Deep Nude. You are not alone and we will help you!
    2. Do not pay any money and report what has happened through the eSafety Commissioner website HERE.
    3. Lock down your socials and go off the grid for a couple of months. The scammer will then move on.
    4. Get onto your socials now and clean up your footprint. Remove images of your bedroom or bathroom, as scammers could use them to make their content more realistic and personal. Lock your accounts down to known peers only and go back and delete old content which has not been shared or interacted with from a while.

To parents;
    1. Please do not panic. If your child comes to you with their concerns, do not automatically assume the content is them. There will be a very real chance the image or vid is AI generated, so we should offer them the benefit of the doubt.
    2. Report through eSafety.

To parents and kids;
   • If content is released online, then in addition to reporting through eSafety, please also visit the TAKE IT DOWN website, run by the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children.

For 20 years Social Media has gone unregulated. As a society, we are in the middle of a global crisis of harm and damage which is a direct result of that lack of regulation and the ignorance of Big Tech for the safety of users.

We cannot and must not allow Artificial Intelligence to follow the same path of destruction.

This technology must be regulated and legislators need to act now (not wait another 20 years). We must demand such software creators build within a culture of Ethical Design or drive Safety by Design principals to help ensure harm minimisation.

Enough is Enough!