Large AI Dataset Has Over 1,000 Child Abuse Images, Report Says

A massive public dataset used to build popular artificial intelligence image generators contains at least 1,008 instances of child sexual abuse material, a new report
from the Stanford Internet Observatory found.

LAION-5B, which contains more than 5 billion images and related captions from the internet, may also include thousands of additional pieces of suspected child sexual abuse material, or CSAM, according to the report. The inclusion of CSAM in the dataset could enable AI products built on this data — including image generation tools like Stable Diffusion — to create new, and potentially realistic, child abuse content, the report warned.

The rise of increasingly powerful AI tools has raised alarms in part because these services are built ...