Apple Inc. has announced its Communication Safety feature, which blocks nudity on child accounts for Messages and FaceTime, will now block violent and gory images – demonstrating this leading tech company can expand their device-level settings to protect children as part of their next operating system update.
Global momentum is growing for device-level protections for children - with the UK Prime Minister announcing at the weekend that tech companies will need to prevent children from viewing, creating or sharing nude images on their devices, or face new legislation including a penalties regime.
Data from Internet Watch Foundation shows that 73% of the child sexual abuse material they analysed in 2025 was not self-generated, suggesting much of the abuse was captured by adults on adult devices.
Tech companies must take responsibility not only for protecting children on children's devices, but also for preventing adults from using their devices to exploit children by deploying on-device, privacy-preserving technology that prevents the viewing or creating of child sexual abuse images and videos in the first place.
Recently in Canberra, International Justice Mission stood alongside British safety tech company SafeToNet to demonstrate how AI tools like their HarmBlock solution can not only block sharing of child sexual abuse material, but can also prevent the creation of this horrific material before children are harmed to produce it.
IJM's Scale of Harm study found that, in 2022, 1 in 100 Filipino children were trafficked to produce new child sexual abuse material—often livestreamed in real time for offenders to watch. Data from the Philippine Anti-Money Laundering Council shows that Australia consistently ranks as the #2 or #3 purchaser of this content.
The deployment of AI classifiers trained to detect and then block child sexual abuse material would stop this illegal content from being able to be seen on Australian devices.
"IJM Australia welcomes Apple's recent announcement of new safety features for children's accounts as it shows what we have been saying for years – these are the largest technology companies in the world and they have the capability to block this illegal content," IJM Australia CEO David Braga said.
"As good as they are, Apple's new features fail to go as far as they should. Child sexual abuse material is illegal and needs to be blocked on all devices with no ability to turn the feature off.
"The Australian Government has already committed to a Digital Duty of Care and their ongoing consultations show their strong intent to ensure that tech companies take responsibility for the safety of children on their platforms and devices and have CSAM prevention tools built into platforms and devices from the start."
In the words of Philippine Survivor Network leader, Barbie in her address in Australian Parliament House in 2024, "A digital duty of care in Australia's Online Safety Act should ensure that tech companies must protect children on their platforms from online sexual exploitation on Australian screens."
Mr Braga said that the time for action has come.
"The momentum here is clear - tech companies need to 'read the room' and start rolling out protections for children on adult screens without the need for legislation, and the Australian Government needs to release their proposed Digital Duty of Care and introduce it to Parliament. We have the tools to protect children today - and we also have the ability to use them."
About us:
IJM partners with local authorities in 34 field offices in 20 countries to combat slavery, violence against women and children and police abuse of power. IJM's mission is to protect people in poverty from violence by rescuing victims, bringing criminals to justice, restoring survivors to safety and strength, and helping local law enforcement build a safe future that lasts.
IJM is working in partnership with local authorities to protect six million children in the Philippines from online sexual exploitation by strengthening the local justice system and advocating for stronger online safety laws in demand-side countries that protect children online.
