Apple is failing to effectively monitor its platforms or scan for images and videos of the sexual abuse of children, child safety experts allege, which is raising concerns about how the company can handle growth in the volume of such material associated with artificial intelligence.
In a year, child predators used Apple’s iCloud, iMessage and Facetime to store and exchange CSAM in a higher number of cases in England and Wales alone than the company reported across all other countries combined, according to police data obtained by the NSPCC.
Through data gathered via freedom of information requests and shared exclusively with the Guardian, the children’s charity found Apple was implicated in 337 recorded offenses of child abuse images between April 2022 and March 2023 in England and Wales.
The company instead directed the Guardian to statements it made last August, in which it said it had decided not to proceed with a program scanning iCloud photos for CSAM because it instead chose a path that “prioritizes the security and privacy of [its] users”.
Apple’s tool, called neuralMatch, would have scanned images before they were uploaded to the iCloud’s online photo storage, comparing them against a database of known child abuse imagery via mathematical fingerprints known as hash values.
“Apple does not detect CSAM in the majority of its environments at scale, at all,” said Sarah Gardner, chief executive officer of Heat Initiative, a Los Angeles non-profit focused on child protection.
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