Plate Nº 26 · recorded November 8, 2026
Reported finding
One in 14 Adults Has Faced AI-Generated Sexual Image Abuse
About one in 14 adults in Australia, the UK and the US reports AI-generated sexual image abuse, a 7,230-person survey finds — with women hit hardest emotionally.
By Nathan Brooks3 min read681 words
In brief
- About 7% of adults — roughly one in 14 — in Australia, the UK and the US reported AI-generated sexual image abuse in a survey of 7,230 people.
- 90.3% of victims reported negative feelings and 86.7% reported negative life impacts.
- Britain had the highest rate at 9.3%, ahead of Australia (7.7%) and the US (6.5%).
- The peer-reviewed study was published September 8, 2026 in the International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction.
- 55.6% of victims said the perpetrator was someone they knew only online.
Roughly one in 14 adults in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States says someone has made, shared or threatened to share AI-generated sexual images of them, according to a peer-reviewed study published September 8, 2026 in the International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction.
The survey, led by Professor Nicola Henry of RMIT University, covered 7,230 adults in July and August 2024. It's the first multi-region attempt to measure how widely so-called AI-generated image-based abuse — sexually explicit fakes created with artificial intelligence — has spread beyond celebrity targets.
"The findings revealed the extent of the abuse across the wider community," Henry said. "We now have evidence of how widely AI-generated image-based abuse is affecting people across the community, not just celebrities and public figures."
How big is the problem?
The headline number: 15.1% of respondents reported at least one experience of abuse involving digitally altered intimate images, counting both AI-generated fakes and other editing methods. About 7% — roughly one in 14 — said AI was specifically involved.
Broken down by tactic:
- 4.3% said someone had created AI-generated intimate images of them without consent
- 4.4% said such images had been shared
- 3.6% said they had been threatened with sharing — a tactic often used in sextortion schemes, where criminals demand money or more explicit material
In a country-by-country comparison, Britain recorded the highest rate at 9.3%, followed by Australia at 7.7% and the United States at 6.5%. Victimization ran higher among people under 35, LGBTQ+ respondents, people of color, and people with disabilities.
And the true scale could be larger still. "The true scale may be even greater because some people may never know that AI-generated images of them have been created or shared," Henry said.
What did the harm look like?
The numbers on impact are stark. Among those victimized, 90.3% reported at least one negative feeling, and 86.7% reported at least one negative impact on their lives.
The gender gap was wide. Women were more likely than men to report exclusively negative reactions — 87.6% versus 71.2% — and far more likely to report feeling afraid for their safety: 42.4% versus 18.1%. Women were also more likely to report feeling sad or depressed, and more likely to report mental health impacts.
Men, by contrast, were significantly more likely to report neutral or positive reactions, such as finding the images funny — though the authors note such responses were uncommon overall.
Who are the perpetrators?
Most victims, 55.6%, said the perpetrator was someone they had known only online. Nearly 30% had interacted with the person face to face, and 14.6% didn't know who was responsible.
When asked to describe the relationship:
- Stranger: 21.4%
- Friend: 14.2%
- Former partner: 9.2%
Perpetrators were most often reported to be men, at 47.4%, though 36.7% of victims named a woman. The authors add a caveat here: that figure could partly reflect scammers who pose as women online.
What happens next?
Henry flags the pace of the problem as an open question. "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 said. "What we don't yet know is how quickly that is translating into increased victimization."
The study has limits worth keeping in mind. The figures come from self-reported surveys across three English-speaking countries, and the authors themselves acknowledge that undetected abuse — images made or shared without a victim's knowledge — would never show up in the data. The survey also captures a single snapshot in mid-2024, before any measurement of how fast the tools have spread since.
Still, the core finding stands: at roughly one in 14 adults, AI-generated sexual imagery abuse is no longer a fringe or celebrity-only problem. It's a measurable harm affecting ordinary people across three countries — and women are bearing the heaviest emotional toll.
via sci.news (Source)
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Market editor covering companies, deals and strategy in general science news at SciBeat.
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