Self-Generated Content and AI: Effective Prevention Messages for Children, Teenagers, and Adults

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI), like many new technological advances before it, brings with it exciting new opportunities as well as new risks. How should the accessibility of GAI change our internet safety messages for children, youth, and parents? At the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, we receive reports that include self-generated content depicting children of all ages. Investigating these cases is difficult enough, but how can we prevent a crime when the victim is the one creating the images used to exploit them or when the images of the child are created using GAI? This workshop will include an interactive discussion of how we must update prevention messaging to children, adolescents, and adults about self-generated content and nonconsensual image sharing using a developmental perspective. We will then discuss how to apply a trauma-informed approach to tailoring prevention messages to specific age groups regarding self-generated and GAI materials. Additionally, we will share free resources that can be used in your community to address issues of self-generated and GAI content with children from kindergarten to twelfth grade.