Law enforcement agencies from 19 countries have arrested 25 suspects linked to a criminal ring that was distributing child sexual abuse material (CSAM) generated using artificial intelligence (AI).
Operation Cumberland, coordinated by Danish law enforcement and supported by Europol, resulted in the seizure of 173 electronic devices and the identification of 273 suspected members tied to the criminal network.
Most individuals arrested during this joint action were apprehended on February 26, 2025, following 33 house searches around the world.
In November 2024, authorities arrested the main suspect, a Danish national, for distributing AI-generated content created through an online platform. Those who wanted to use the suspects’ service could obtain a password to access the platform after making a symbolic online payment to watch AI-generated content 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. “This contributes to the growing prevalence of child sexual abuse material, and as the volume increases, it becomes progressively more challenging for investigators to identify offenders or victims.”
Europol has established and led the Stop Child Abuse – Trace An Object initiative since 2017, enabling people to provide information that can help cases of child sexual abuse by recognizing objects linked to the investigations.
The initiative helped identify 30 victims until November 2023, allowing law enforcement agents to arrest six offenders, who were prosecuted based on information provided by almost 28,000 tips.
Australian Federal Police also launched its own version of the Stop Child Abuse initiative in March 2021, focusing on the Asia Pacific region.
“Europol and its partners will launch an online campaign in the coming days highlighting the consequences of using AI for illegal purposes and targeting potential offenders where they are most active: online,” Europol added 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.”
This week, Microsoft also named multiple threat actors linked to a global cybercrime gang (tracked as Storm-2139), who are accused of creating malicious tools designed to bypass generative AI guardrails to generate illicit content including celebrity deepfakes.