More than one in 10 students have witnessed their peers using artificial intelligence to create sexual deepfakes, research suggests.
Around 12 per cent of young people aged 13 to 17 have seen other teenagers create sexual pictures and videos of other people using AI, according to a survey by the UK Safer Internet Centre and the domain-name registry Nominet.
Meanwhile, 60 per cent of the 2,000 young people surveyed were worried about AI being used to make inappropriate pictures of them.
The research comes after the UK’s data regulator opened a over their compliance with UK law, after the chatbot Grok was used to generate sexual deepfake images without consent.
Teenagers using AI for emotional support
Some 41 per cent of the teenagers surveyed said AI could provide emotional support, while 34 per cent said explicitly that it can help with mental health and feelings.
A third of the parents surveyed were worried about the impact of AI on their child’s cognitive and learning development, while 35 per cent of young people said AI has made them personally less creative.
An earlier study by a former government adviser warned that pupils’ ability to learn could be damaged by overreliance on AI tools.
The latest polling also shows that half of young people have seen others their age using AI to do their homework or schoolwork for them.
Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the NEU teaching union, said the findings show the extraordinary scale of AI use among young people.
While the government’s curriculum review recognised the need for AI to appear more on the curriculum, teachers, students and parents cannot afford to wait 18 months for changes, he added.
The union leader has previously criticised the government for not involving teachers in its work on AI in education, after 91 revealed that Google DeepMind is exploring how its chatbot, Gemini, can be used safely by teachers.
Mr Kebede said the survey findings must serve as a “clarion call for government to act urgently to ensure that children have the information, support and resources they need to make informed, safe and ethical decisions about AI”.
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the NAHT school leaders’ union, said: “AI should be used to support and enhance learning, not simply to complete tasks, and that is true for both pupils’ work and teachers’ delivery of lessons.
“These findings highlight the importance of children developing skills like problem solving and critical thinking - to be questioning and able to identify good and bad information, biased perspectives and harmful content, as well as understanding the importance of data privacy and the risks of plagiarism.”
DfE champions AI tools
While the movement against children’s use of social media and phones in schools has been gathering momentum, the government has championed the benefits of AI learning tools for schools.
The Department for Education has announced that more than 1,000 schools and colleges will be recruited to try out new technologies to aid learning.
AI tutoring is set to be available for disadvantaged students in all schools by the end of 2027, as 91 first revealed last year.
Ofsted has also found that about the potential of AI to cut workload and support teaching.
Technology secretary Liz Kendall said: “This research shows that young people are embracing AI in remarkable ways; using it to learn and save time. This is exactly how we want technology to support people of all ages. But its true benefits won’t be realised until AI is both safe and accessible to everyone.
“We are investing in safe AI tutors for disadvantaged children and upskilling millions of people across the country, while launching a national conversation on how we build a safer, fairer and more empowering digital future for every child.”
She added: “We are also clear that no one should be victim to AI being weaponised to create abhorrent explicit content without their consent. That’s why we brought forward a new criminal offence to ban it.”
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