Reports of online child sexual abuse material went from 1 million in 2010 to 20 million today, and AI-generated new material increased 1,000% in a single year.
Internal AffairsInternational
- Omissions
- The '20 million today' figure matches data from around 2024 (the European Commission cited 'more than 20 million' reports for 2024); by mid-2026 the actual figure is likely higher, so the claim, if anything, understates current totals.
- The claimed '1,000% single-year increase' in AI-generated material could not be matched to a specific documented statistic. Documented single-year growth ranges from +380% (actionable AI CSAM reports processed by the IWF in 2024) to roughly +8,800% (AI CSAM images on the open web, 2024) and a 260-fold (~26,000%) rise in AI CSAM videos in 2025, making the claimed figure a conservative mid-range value rather than an exact match to any published metric.
- The AI growth figure rests on data from a single organisation (the Internet Watch Foundation, which monitors the open web); it does not capture AI-generated CSAM on closed platforms or the dark web.
- The full text of the European Commission press release and the 2022 EUR-Lex proposal containing the exact '1 million / 20 million' figures could not be retrieved in the search results; the trajectory is nonetheless consistent with the Commission's published framing of the issue.
- Sources retrieved after the session date (IWF 2026 report on 2025 data) were used because they describe the correct reference period; the MEP could have known the underlying 2025 data at the time of the session.