What Is a Deepfake?
A deepfake is an AI-generated image, video, or audio recording in which a person's likeness is convincingly placed in a situation they were never in. Early deepfakes required significant computing power and expertise. Today, high-quality deepfakes can be generated in minutes using free or low-cost smartphone apps — and the quality improves every month.
How Deepfakes Are Being Used Against Minors
Nonconsensual intimate imagery (NCII) — also called 'deepfake porn' — involves using a real person's face to generate sexually explicit images or videos without their consent. Law enforcement and school administrators across the country have documented cases in which students (predominantly girls) have been targeted by peers using these tools. This content is used to humiliate, blackmail, and silence victims.
Identity fraud and impersonation: deepfakes can be used to create convincing videos or audio of a child saying things they never said — material that can be used for harassment, to damage relationships, or to manipulate the child's social environment.
Sextortion: criminals use deepfake tools as part of financial and sexual extortion schemes targeting teenagers. A child receives a message claiming to include fabricated compromising material, with a demand for money or real images to prevent its distribution.
The Legal Landscape
The creation of deepfake sexual imagery of minors is a federal crime in the United States regardless of whether real underlying sexual imagery was used. Most states have also enacted or are enacting specific laws against nonconsensual deepfake imagery.
The challenge is enforcement: deepfake content is typically created and distributed quickly, often through anonymous accounts on overseas platforms. Legal remedies exist but are slow relative to the speed of online harm.
Protecting Your Child Proactively
The most significant preventive measure is restricting what images of your child are publicly accessible online. This is a family conversation worth having explicitly: what images do we share publicly? Who can see them? What's the risk if those images were used in ways we didn't intend? Many families choose to restrict the public visibility of images of minors, particularly on social media.
If Your Child Is Targeted
Document everything before reporting or attempting to remove content — screenshots, URLs, usernames, timestamps. Report to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) through their CyberTipline. Contact the platform directly through their safety reporting features, specifically identifying the content as deepfake CSAM if it involves a minor.
If the content involves sexual imagery, treat it as a law enforcement matter from the outset — contact your local police department and ask specifically about their cyber crimes unit. Do not attempt to locate or directly confront the person responsible.
Support your child through the process: being a victim of this kind of attack is deeply distressing. Professional counseling is appropriate and advisable.
Ongoing Conversations
This is a topic most parents haven't discussed with their children — and most children don't know to report to a parent if they're targeted. A brief, factual family conversation ('There's a type of AI that can put anyone's face in a fake video — if you ever see something like that with you or a friend in it, come tell me right away and you won't be in trouble') plants the seed of disclosure that can make the difference between a handled situation and a prolonged ordeal.
