{"slug": "child-sexual-deepfakes-in-japan-more-than-double-in-first-half-of-2026", "title": "Child sexual deepfakes in Japan more than double in first half of 2026", "summary": "Child sexual deepfakes in Japan more than doubled to 123 cases in the first half of 2026, up from 60 a year earlier and exceeding the 114 logged in all of 2025, the National Police Agency said Monday. Junior high school students accounted for 79 victims, and in 83 cases the suspected perpetrators were classmates or students at the same school. The agency will step up public awareness campaigns on the illegal use of AI while pursuing criminal investigations.", "body_md": "Cases involving sexual deepfakes targeting children more than doubled in number in Japan in the first half of 2026, the National Police Agency has said.\n\nPolice handled 123 such cases in the six months, exceeding both the 60 recorded a year earlier and the 114 logged in all of 2025, the agency said Monday.\n\nThe surge highlights the rapid spread of generative AI and its increasingly sophisticated image-editing capabilities.\n\nJunior high school students accounted for 79 victims, followed by 38 high school students, three elementary school pupils and three others whose backgrounds could not be determined.\n\nIn 83 cases, the suspected perpetrators were classmates or students attending the same school as the victims. Seven cases involved people who had met the victims through social media or other online platforms.\n\nPolice also identified four cases in which children unknown to the suspects were secretly photographed in public before their images were altered into sexually explicit content.\n\nTwo suspects had been referred to prosecutors by the end of June, while investigations into other cases remain under way.\n\nThe agency said it will step up public awareness campaigns on the illegal use of AI while pursuing criminal investigations into egregious cases and cracking down on such offenses.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/child-sexual-deepfakes-in-japan-more-than-double-in-first-half-of-2026", "canonical_source": "https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2026/08/05/japan/crime-legal/child-sexual-deepfakes-double/", "published_at": "2026-08-05 02:26:00+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-05 02:56:24.070535+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["generative-ai", "ai-ethics", "ai-policy"], "entities": ["National Police Agency"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/child-sexual-deepfakes-in-japan-more-than-double-in-first-half-of-2026", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/child-sexual-deepfakes-in-japan-more-than-double-in-first-half-of-2026.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/child-sexual-deepfakes-in-japan-more-than-double-in-first-half-of-2026.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/child-sexual-deepfakes-in-japan-more-than-double-in-first-half-of-2026.jsonld"}}