Roughly one in 14 adults say someone made, shared or threatened to share AI-generated sexual images of them

Roughly one in 14 adults in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States says someone has made, shared or threatened to share sexually explicit images of them created with artificial intelligence, according to Sci.News, which reported a new peer-reviewed study.

Nicola Henry of RMIT University and her colleagues surveyed 7,230 adults in July and August 2024. Respondents were asked about digitally altered intimate images, and the survey separated AI-generated fakes from those made by other editing methods. Overall, 15.1% reported at least one experience of abuse involving such altered images. About 7% said AI was specifically involved.

Within the AI-specific group, 4.3% of respondents said someone had created intimate images of them without consent. Another 4.4% said such images had been shared, and 3.6% said they had been threatened with sharing, a tactic often used in sextortion schemes. By country, the rates were highest in Britain at 9.3%, followed by Australia at 7.7% and the United States at 6.5%.

Victimization was higher among people under 35, LGBTQ+ respondents, people of color, and people with disabilities. Henry said the findings revealed the extent of the abuse across the wider community.

Among respondents who had been victimized, 90.3% reported at least one negative feeling, and 86.7% reported at least one negative impact on their lives. Women were more likely than men to report exclusively negative reactions, at 87.6% versus 71.2%. They were also more likely to report feeling afraid for their safety, at 42.4% versus 18.1%, and to report sadness or depression and mental health impacts. Men were significantly more likely than women to report neutral or positive reactions, such as finding the images funny, though such responses were uncommon overall.

The survey also asked who was responsible. Most victims, 55.6%, said the perpetrator was someone they had known only online. Nearly 30% said they had interacted with the person in person, and 14.6% did not know who was responsible. Asked to describe the relationship, the most common answer was stranger, at 21.4%, followed by friend at 14.2% and former partner at 9.2%. Victims most often reported that the perpetrator was a man, at 47.4%, while 36.7% named a woman. The authors caution that this could partly reflect scammers who pose as women online.

Henry said that as generative AI becomes more widely available, there is greater potential for these tools to be misused to create, share or threaten to share intimate images without consent. She added that researchers do not yet know how quickly that is translating into increased victimization. The data come from adults in three countries, as reported by Sci.News, and cover a single collection window in 2024, so they cannot show whether rates have risen since.

The paper is titled "That Experience Still Haunts Me to This Day": A Multi-Region Survey on AI-Generated Image-Based Sexual Abuse Victimization (doi: 10.1080/10447318.2026.2723677).