Law Enforcement agencies from 19 countries arrested 25 suspects who were linked to a criminal ring distributing child sexual abuse materials (CSAMs) generated by artificial intelligence (AI).
Operation Cumberland was coordinated by Danish law enforcement with support from Europol. It resulted in seizure of 173 devices and identification of 273 suspected criminals.
The majority of those arrested in this joint action were apprehended by the authorities on February 26, 2025 after 33 house searches across the globe.
The authorities arrested a Danish citizen in November 2024 for distributing AI generated content created on an online platform. After making a symbolic payment online, those who wanted to use suspects’ services could get a password for accessing the platform to watch AI-generated videos featuring children being abused.
“These artificially generated images are so easily created that they can be produced by individuals with criminal intent, even without substantial technical knowledge,”
said Catherine De Bolle, Europol’s Executive Director. Since 2017, Europol has led the Stop Child Abuse – Trace An Object Initiative allowing people to provide information to help cases of child sex abuse by recognizing items linked to the investigation. The initiative, which was launched in November 2017, helped law enforcement agents identify 30 victims. Six offenders were arrested based on the information provided by nearly 28,000 tips.
The Australian Federal Police launched its own version of the Stop Child Abuse Initiative in March 2021. It focused on the Asia Pacific Region. Europol announced on Friday.”The campaign will use online messages to reach buyers of illegal content, as well as other methods such as knock-and-talks, social media messages and warning letters.”
Microsoft has also named this week multiple threat actors who are linked to a global cybercrime group (tracked under Storm-2139), and who are accused of developing malicious tools to bypass generative AI safeguardrails in order to generate illicit content, including celebrity deepfakes.
