Overview
- Authorities in Hessen and Niedersachsen say they have seen a rise in sexualized images of children created with artificial intelligence and using publicly posted photos as source material.
- Hessen set up a central contact point at its Landeskriminalamt on April 1 to build a statewide picture, and the specialised FOKUS unit now has more than 300 staff handling cases.
- Police are introducing AI-based triage to compress open-source leads and plan undercover 'fake-child' online operations to identify offenders while insisting such tools must meet legal standards.
- Investigators warn that evidence gaps are crippling follow-up work: more than 10,700 child‑abuse leads were closed in the first three months of 2026 for lack of stored IP-address data, prompting calls for retention rules.
- Officials urge parents to limit public sharing of children’s photos and expand victim support, and they warn the spread of realistic deepfakes could lower barriers to wider abuse and commercial exploitation.