More than 1 million NZ child sex abuse online viewing attempts as AI content increases

Auckland was the region with the highest number of blocked attempts to view child sex abuse material. Photo / 123rf.com

More than 1 million attempts to view child sexual abuse material online in New Zealand were blocked last year, a 13% drop in pageviews from the previous year.

The statistic is revealed in the annual Digital Child Exploitation Transparency Report, which includes a stark warning about “disturbingly realistic” generative artificial child sexual exploitation material that is becoming more common.

The report, authored by the Department of Internal Affairs, said 1,032,683 attempts nationally to access websites known to harbour child sex material were blocked by a web filter integrated across most New Zealand internet providers.

The highest number of attempts for one region, 294,336, took place in Auckland.

Christchurch registered the second-highest (186,244), followed by Wellington (98,665), New Plymouth (25,196), Dunedin (23,175) and Palmerston North (18,537).

In 2024, Internal Affairs, Police and Customs received 16,223 referrals from the United States-based National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children concerning child sex exploitation content.

The platform linked to the highest number of referrals (5834) was Snapchat, followed by Facebook (2439) and Instagram (1888).

Almost 3000 referrals were assessed by Internal Affairs, including referrals about content involving child abuse, bestiality, and necrophilia.

The report referenced one operation that launched in 2020 in response to an offender distributing child sex material on an online messaging platform.

It led to the discovery of a network of seven New Zealand-based offenders with “harmful sexual behaviours towards children”.

Two were referred to the police while the remaining five were apprehended on a range of charges, from indecent acts on a child to distributing objectionable material. Two had since died.

The operation, which led to the “safeguarding” of one New Zealand child, uncovered more than 12,000 pieces of child sex material which involved “infants who were exposed to obvious and intentional suffering”.

Across the year, 14 New Zealand children were “helped to be safeguarded” according to the report.

Internal Affairs also identified several emerging harms that could complicate the policing of child sex abuse material, ranging from improved encryption across technology platforms and the growing number of methods to pay electronically for such material.

One threat was the rise in “generative artificial” content. More than 700 reports of such content had been made since 2023.

The report said fake images and videos had become “disturbingly realistic” amid ongoing technological advancement, meaning investigators had to invest more time in determining whether the children visible in the material were real or not.

“This content is becoming easier to generate, normalising this type of offending and encouraging the sexual abuse of children.”

Adam Pearse is the deputy political editor and part of the NZ Herald’s Press Gallery team based at Parliament in Wellington. He has worked for NZME since 2018, reporting for the Northern Advocate in Whangārei and the Herald in Auckland.