Isle of Man police flag serious AI bullying harm to children
TL;DR
- Isle of Man Constabulary reported a sharp rise earlier this year in deepfake and indecent images made by children using AI tools
- Some young people have changed schools or left the island after becoming targets of AI-enabled online abuse, PC Louise Kennaugh said
- Cases affect children as young as seven, with police emphasising education over criminalisation
Police on the Isle of Man have described the “massive” impact AI-enabled online abuse is having on children, in an interview with the BBC. Some young people have been forced to change schools, and in the most serious cases have left the island altogether, according to PC Louise Kennaugh. Isle of Man Constabulary reported a sharp rise earlier this year in deepfake and indecent images created by children using artificial intelligence tools.
What the officers are seeing
Kennaugh, who works as a school education officer, described traditional bullying moving to social media with far more serious consequences. Young people are “taking pictures of each other and then making it look like they’re doing something else” — weaponising AI image-generation tools against classmates. The emotional harm can lead to self-harm, she warned: “It’s the emotional harm that this is and can cause and that’s massive.”
The reach is striking. When Kennaugh asks primary-school classes whether pupils have seen something online that scared them, “about three quarters of each class will put their hands up.” The phenomenon reaches children as young as seven — an age bracket where conversations about AI, consent and image abuse are particularly difficult to have.
The force’s position is that education is the priority over criminalisation: “We don’t want to criminalise young people, we want to educate them.” Parents are being urged to stay engaged with their children’s online activity “in a caring way.”
The UK online safety picture
The Isle of Man case is one local snapshot of a national UK problem. Ofcom’s Online Safety Act implementation has been focused on large platform responsibilities, but the specific AI-deepfake bullying vector falls between platform moderation and school safeguarding. The ICO’s children’s code covers data protection but not image generation. No single regulator fully owns the problem, leaving local forces and schools to manage the fallout.
The Act’s illegal harms duties cover the creation of indecent images of children, which catches the most serious cases. But non-indecent AI-manipulation — making a classmate appear to be doing something embarrassing rather than sexual — sits in greyer legal territory, even though the emotional impact on targeted children can be severe.
Looking forward
Expect renewed pressure on Ofcom to issue specific guidance on AI-generated content targeting children, and for the Department for Education to update safeguarding guidance. UK age-assurance obligations on image-generation platforms remain patchy — a gap that connects to the broader BBFC tooling work classifying HBO Max content this week. For schools and parents, the Isle of Man experience is a warning about how fast the harm landscape has shifted: the tools to produce convincing fake imagery are now in children’s pockets.