Baroness Kidron (CB)

My Lords, Amendment 203 is in my name and the names of the noble Lords, Lord Bethell, Lord Stevenson and Lord Clement-Jones. I thank noble Lords wholeheartedly for their support for this measure through two versions of this Bill. I believe that I speak for all signatories in recognising the support of a huge number of colleagues in both Houses and all parties who have expressed their support for this amendment. It is my understanding that we are going to hear good news from the Dispatch Box. In the event that I am wrong, I shall have more to say once we have heard from the Minister. In the meantime, I want to explain what the problem is that the amendment seeks to solve. It is illegal in the UK to possess or distribute child sexual abuse material, including AI-generated or computer-generated child sexual abuse material. The laws that the police use to enforce against CSAM are Section 1 of the Protection of Children Act 1978 and Section 160 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, both of which create offences in respect of indecent photographs or pseudo-photographs of a child. AI content depicting child sexual abuse is illegal under these laws, but creating and distributing the software models needed to generate them is not, which means that those building and distributing software that allows paedophiles to generate bespoke child sexual abuse material have operated with impunity. There are many services that allow anyone to take any public image and put it in a false situation. Although I have argued elsewhere that AI images should carry a mark of provenance, these services are not the subject of this amendment. This amendment is laser focused on criminalising AI models that are trained on or trained to create child sexual abuse material. They are specific, specialist and currently beyond the reach of the police. The models blend images of children—known children, stock photos, images scraped from social media, school websites or synthetic, fabricated AI depictions of children—with existing CSAM or pornography, and they allow paedophiles to generate bespoke CSAM scenarios of unimaginable depravity, as they are unmitigated by any restrictions that organise the reality of the world. If someone can think, type or say it, they can make it so. Many of the generative models are distributed for free, but more specialist models are provided on subscription for less than £50 per month. This payment provides any child sexual offender with the ability to generate limitless—and I do mean limitless—child sexual abuse images. But while the police can take action against those who possess those images, they are unable to take action against those who make it possible to do so: the means of production. A surprising number of people think that AI abuse is a victimless crime, and I want to make it clear that it is not. First, who would be comfortable with the image of their child or grandchild or their neighbour’s child being used in this way? Anyone, adult or child, can appear in AI-generated CSAM. I am not going to say how it can be done, because I do not want my words to be a set of instructions on the public record—but the reality is, any one of us, woman or man, though 99% are women, boy or girl, though it is mostly girls, is a potential victim. If your image is used in this way, you are a victim; if you are forced to watch or copy such imagery, you are a victim; and if you are a child whose real-life abuse is not caught because you are lost in a sea of AI-generated material, you are a victim. Then there is the normalisation of sexual violence against children, which poisons relationships—intimate, familial, across generations, genders and sexes. This is not a victimless crime.