AI 'nudify' apps driving surge in teen sextortion, suicide cases mount

Washington: The parents of a Kentucky teenager who died by suicide this year say their son had been blackmailed with an AI-generated nude image, highlighting a disturbing rise in digital sextortion schemes targeting children across the globe.

Sixteen-year-old Elijah Heacock received threatening messages demanding $3,000 in exchange for not distributing what appeared to be an AI-created explicit image of him. After his death, his parents discovered the chilling extortion attempts.

“The people that are after our children are well organised, well financed, and relentless,” his father, John Burnett, told CBS News. “They don’t need the photos to be real – they can generate whatever they want, and then they use it to blackmail the child.”

Authorities in the United States are investigating the case, which is part of a growing pattern involving so-called “nudify” apps – AI tools capable of digitally undressing people or fabricating sexualised images. Once used largely to target celebrities, these tools are now increasingly being weaponised against children.

Worrying surge in AI-fuelled sextortion

The FBI has warned of a “horrific increase” in sextortion cases involving American minors, particularly boys aged 14 to 17. In many cases, fake or AI-generated nudes are used to demand money or further explicit material from victims, often with devastating consequences. The agency has linked the phenomenon to an “alarming number” of suicides.

A recent report from child protection charity Thorn found that 6% of American teenagers have been directly targeted with deepfake nudes.

“Reports of fakes and deepfakes – many generated using these ‘nudify’ services – seem to be closely linked with financial sextortion,” said the UK-based Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), which monitors online child abuse. “Perpetrators no longer need to source real images – AI-generated ones can be convincing enough to cause real harm.”

The IWF has also identified a disturbing online “paedophile guide” encouraging predators to use nudifying tools for blackmail. Its author reportedly boasted of targeting 13-year-old girls.

A booming underground market

A recent investigation by US outlet Indicator analysed 85 websites offering nudify services and estimated the market could be worth up to $36 million a year. Eighteen of those sites alone may have generated between $2.6 million and $18.4 million over just six months.

Despite global crackdowns, the sites continue to thrive – many relying on hosting and infrastructure services from tech giants such as Google, Amazon, and Cloudflare.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has recently launched legal action against a Hong Kong-based company operating one such app, Crush AI, which allegedly flouted Meta’s advertising rules to reach users.

The AI-fuelled abuse has also reached schools and universities, with students using the tools to create sexualised deepfakes of classmates and teachers.

In Spain, a Save the Children survey revealed that one in five young people have been victims of deepfake nudes. Prosecutors recently launched an investigation into three teenagers accused of circulating explicit AI-generated images of classmates and teachers in a school in Puertollano.

Global legislative response

Governments are beginning to respond to the growing crisis. The United Kingdom this year introduced new legislation making the creation of sexually explicit deepfakes a criminal offence, with perpetrators facing up to two years in prison.

In the United States, President Joe Biden signed the bipartisan Take It Down Act in May, which criminalises the non-consensual sharing of intimate images and mandates their swift removal from online platforms.

Yet, experts warn that such efforts are still lagging behind the pace of abuse. “To date, the fight against AI nudifiers has been a game of whack-a-mole,” said Indicator, describing the apps as “persistent and malicious adversaries.”