Police battling paedophiles warn AI could be used to weaponise innocent family photos

Paedophiles could use artificial intelligence to manipulate ordinary family photographs into indecent images of children, police said, as they granted Sky News special access to the war against online abuse.

Our cameras were given a rare look inside a specialist unit within Police Scotland, the second-largest police force in the UK, where detectives are dealing with a sharp rise in online child sexual exploitation.

Officers say advances in technology are fundamentally changing both the scale and nature of offending.

Speaking about AI-generated abuse material, Detective Chief Inspector Mhairi Cooper, who leads the unit, told Sky News: "It's absolutely an emerging threat."

Police fear the technology could allow offenders to take otherwise innocent images, including those shared by parents on social media, and alter them into something sinister.

While such cases are not yet widespread, officers say the trajectory is clear.

Detective Constable David Murray, a digital investigator who has to view explicit images of children, said: "It is definitely… creeping in… and it will become problematic.

"If it looks realistic, then we would treat it as a crime… it is just as criminal."

The concerns sit against a backdrop of growing demand.

In Scotland alone, around a thousand victims have been identified in the past two years, including a child aged just one.

Raiding a suspected paedophile

Inside the unit, much of the work begins far from the physical world, with data, digital traces, and intelligence shared by technology companies and international partners. But those leads quickly translate into real-world consequences.

During our visit, we observed a covert early-morning briefing, where officers working undercover prepared to arrest a man suspected of sexually communicating online with a 12-year-old child in the east of Scotland area.

The operation that followed was tightly controlled.

Cameras were kept at a distance to avoid identifying the address or alerting neighbours, reflecting both the sensitivity of the work and the risk of evidence being lost.

"If a suspect realises we're there… files can be deleted almost instantly," one officer said.

Detective Constable Helena Scott said such moments are often critical.

"Possibly about 60 to 70% of the time… that's exactly what it's like," she said, describing attempts by suspects to destroy digital evidence.

"In one case, a laptop was snapped in half… but we got there quick enough that we could still recover it."

Following the operation, a man was arrested, devices were seized, and officers confirmed that relevant evidence had been found. He has been reported to court.

The officers who have to view child abuse images

Beyond enforcement, investigators face the painstaking task of identifying victims, often from the smallest details within images.

"You learn to look around the image… not the image itself," said DC Murray. "You're looking for anything that might help locate that child."

Despite the emerging risks, officers are not advising parents to stop sharing images altogether. Instead, they urge greater awareness.

"If you want to share family images… make sure you know who you're sharing them with… lock down your profiles," DCI Cooper said.

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DC Murray acknowledged the tension: "You've got to be cautious… but this is the age we live in. It's difficult to balance."

For investigators, the concern is that as technology advances, so too does the capacity for harm, pushing this already complex area of policing into new and uncertain territory.

(c) Sky News 2026: Police battling paedophiles warn AI could be used to weaponise innocent family photos