I Used to Share Photos of My Daughter Online. Horrifying New AI Data Has Made Me Stop

Editor's Note: This article discusses child sexual abuse material (CSAM), including the use of AI to manipulate images of children.

I was pretty blasé about sharing photos of my daughter online for the first 14 months of her life. I'd ticked the box giving her nursery consent to use photographs of her without a second thought. I'd proudly announced her arrival on Instagram, then shared holiday snaps and photos from her first birthday.

I was far from alone. Abi*, 31, a mum of two toddlers, posted monthly photo updates of both children until they turned one, creating a record of their development as so many Millennial mums do. Charis*, 30, who also has two toddlers, began by sharing her pregnancy journey; "sharenting" — sharing photos of your children online — felt like a natural extension of that. "It was an innocent way to connect with other mums, and we enjoyed watching each other's kids grow up," she says. I get it completely.

But that innocence tips into naivety when you learn that in 2025, the Internet Watch Foundation identified 8,029 AI-generated child sexual abuse images and videos, which included 3,443 videos compared to just 13 in 2024. Of the 2025 videos, roughly 65% fell into what UK law enforcement classifies as Category A — the most severe classification reserved for the worst child sexual abuse content. And the rapid growth in cases continues. In the first six months of this year, there have been more reports of sexualised “deepfakes” than in the whole of 2025. Meanwhile, technology has become more sophisticated, and the content is so convincing that even IWF analysts can no longer reliably tell AI-generated imagery from the real thing.

Child sexual abuse material (CSAM) like this is illegal, but it often begins as everyday images of a child, taken from social media or websites, and then manipulated into sexualised or abusive imagery. The IWFs research states that realistic deepfakes of specific children can be made using freely available tools and as few as 20 images, in 15 minutes.

This May, the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) advised UK schools to pull identifiable student photos from their websites, or not use them at all, after blackmailers created AI-generated CSAM from scraped images and demanded money in sextortion cases. Behind every story like this is a real child and their family. It's horrifying. And something that really stuck with Abi, as a former Primary teacher whose eldest is due to start school this month.

“My children deserve to enjoy a 90s childhood as we did. I won’t be giving the school consent to use their photographs, and I’m now only sharing ‘faceless’ images on social media.” Incidents like these are prompting a sharp rethink of sharenting across the world. France passed a law in 2024 giving children legal image rights; Italy has a similar bill under consideration.

To understand if responsible sharenting is possible in 2026, I spoke to Tom Dyson, Head of Marketing at the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), the UK charity that tracks down and removes CSAM. He has a seven-year-old son himself, and chooses not to share images of him on social media. “I’m in a position where I have a lot of proof and information at my fingertips. But that doesn't mean it’s the right choice for everyone.” The IWF wants parents to be “armed with the facts”, because the risk, unlike most other parenting hazards, is invisible until it isn't.

Asking: does this actually need to be on social media? Is IWF’s advice. Objectively, the answer might seem simple. In practice, sharing our lives online is so ingrained that not sharing can feel more unusual.

But normal and safe aren’t necessarily the same thing. AI has changed the risk, and if that risk feels uncomfortable for your family, there are ways to reduce it.

Start with your privacy settings. A public account with 500 followers is still public: anyone can access those images, whether five hundred people follow you or five million. Switching to a private account, or sharing with a smaller “close friends” list, reduces that exposure — and the smaller the circle, the better.

“But private accounts aren’t completely risk-free — you're still trusting that everyone in that group is who they say they are,” says Dyson. “There's nothing within most social media platforms that IDs an individual when they sign up for an account. An account can look like one thing, but be something — or someone — completely different.”

Accounts can be hacked, too. Ultimately, once an image has been shared, it only takes one person to take it beyond the audience you intended.

When Charis learned that someone she and her partner had known as teenagers had been convicted of possessing indecent images, she went through her Facebook friends list. “I had 1,500 followers and I got rid of most of them. Unfortunately, that included the guy who’d been convicted.”

My own accounts are private, but like Charis, I joined social media as a teenager. When I actually look at who follows me on Instagram now, I feel intense unease at finding close to 200 unknown or business accounts that I couldn’t put a name or face to.

For parents who want to keep documenting their lives publicly, blurring children’s faces or covering them with emojis has become a common compromise. It’s what Charis does now. “I’m not sharing my children’s faces anymore. What happened was just so close to home,” she says.

“An emoji is probably better than nothing,” Dyson agrees, “but it's important it doesn’t give us a false sense of security.” There’s everything else in the frame to consider: a school uniform, house number, recognisable street or local landmark. And while AI may sometimes be able to remove a blur or covering, it doesn’t necessarily need to. It can generate a convincing approximation of a child’s face from scratch, or draw on previously shared images of the same child.

There’s another reassuring idea that circulates among parents online: photos shared before a child turns one are somehow safer because babies are less recognisable. Unfortunately, that logic doesn’t hold up either.

“There isn't a particular age at which sharing a child's image is safer,” Dyson says. More sickening still, the IWF sees CSAM involving children of all ages.

Nor does deleting a photograph necessarily undo the decision to post it. Once something has been shared publicly — even briefly — it may already have been copied, cached or archived elsewhere online, Dyson explains.

By this point, protecting your child online can start to feel like a losing battle.

Dyson reminds me that the responsibility for safer sharenting doesn’t sit with parents alone. “Tech companies, regulators, governments and charities like the IWF are here to help solve this problem too.” It’s unfair that parents have to think about any of this. But the technology — and the threat it poses — is evolving all the time.

For now, I’m going back to my daughter’s nursery to withdraw that consent. I’ve locked down my accounts, cut my follower count in half and now share photos of her only with my “close friends” list on Instagram Stories. There’s a conversation to be had with her aunties and uncles, too.

But I feel much more comfortable with what — and how — I’m sharing. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. And as my daughter grows and changes, so might my decisions.

Next time my knee-jerk reaction to a cute photo or video is to post it, I’ll ask myself: does this really need to be on social media? Or could I just send it to family and friends on WhatsApp? Most of the time, I suspect, my overwhelming love, pride and joy in sharing my daughter is better served there.

*Names have been changed

Worried about your child’s images online? Here’s where to get help

Report Remove
A free, confidential service from Childline and the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) that helps under-18s report sexual images or videos of themselves online and have them removed where possible. It also covers images that have been manipulated or generated using AI.
Visit Report Remove

Check your social media privacy settings
Internet Matters has step-by-step guides for tightening privacy, blocking and reporting across platforms including Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and Snapchat.
Read the social media privacy guides

Read the IWF’s guidance for parents
The Internet Watch Foundation has specific advice for parents and carers on reducing the risk of children’s photographs being manipulated using AI.
Read the IWF guidance