Officials plead with Kansas parents to educate kids about internet safety in light of AI sex abuse
Wichita police Sgt. Jeff Swanson, left, and U.S. attorney Ryan Kriegshauser urge parents to educate their children about the dangers of AI-generated sexual abuse materials during an April 21, 2026, news conference at the Robert J. Dole Federal Courthouse in Kansas City, Kansas. (Photo by Grace Hills for Kansas Reflector)
KANSAS CITY, Kan. — State and federal Kansas government officials say that with artificial intelligence being used to create child sexual abuse materials from a simple photo of a child’s face, the best way to protect children is by educating them early.
Wichita police Sgt. Jeff Swanson is part of the Kansas Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, which has existed since 2000. In 2014, Swanson said, the task force received about 650 cyber tips. Last year it received more than 11,000.
“It’s a huge problem. It’s not going to be solved by expecting us to arrest everybody involved in it,” Swanson said.
Plus, there’s the global element.
“I don’t know how somebody in the United States could hold somebody in Nigeria accountable for the platform that they create there,” Swanson said. “Again, it goes back to their parents.”
The solution, Swanson said, is educating children about the crime.
Swanson, U.S. Attorney Ryan Kriegshauser, and Kansas City FBI agent Jeff Berkebile addressed a group of reporters Tuesday to warn about the distribution of child sexual abuse materials — or CSAM for short — and sexual extortion. Sexual extortion is where a predator pressures a child into sending them sexually explicit images, then uses the images as blackmail.
With the exponential growth of the internet, CSAM was already an overwhelming problem. Then came artificial intelligence.
“The crimes that we investigate have changed dramatically,” Swanson said. “It used to be possession, distribution, child pornography, where you had known images. The new trend is now creating images. There’s literally hundreds of AI software online that can be used to manipulate innocent images to make them look illegal, turn them into CSAM.”
How to protect children
Berkebile outlined the steps caregivers should take to protect their children against CSAM and sexual extortion.
Step one: Learn about the dangers.
Step two: Talk openly about the dangers of the internet — especially about communicating with strangers.
Step three: Teach children to recognize red flags. Encourage them to only speak to people they know in real life.
Step four: Know how to report a crime.
“If you believe your child or someone you know is a victim or witness something inappropriate, please, immediately, report the activity to your local law enforcement, call your local FBI office, or report a tip at tips.fbi.gov,” Berkebile said. “Remember to save all material and correspondence for law enforcement to review.”
Step five: Provide a safe space for children.
“They often convince children that something terrible will happen if they speak up,” Berkebile said. “Let your child know, clearly and often, that they will never be in trouble for coming to you.”
Penalties for sexual extortion in Kansas were heightened this year after an El Dorado teenager died by suicide after being sexually extorted. In his case, the predator encouraged him to kill himself because he couldn’t provide a $50 gift card quick enough.
Kriegshauser said that legislation was a good move. He also applauded the 2025 Take It Down Act from Congress, which declared offenders would be subject to penalties for publishing “intimate visual depictions” of people, real or AI-generated, without their consent.
Kriegshauser hopes the compliance provisions of the Take It Down Act — like the notice and removal requirements that requires websites remove unwanted intimate photos within 48 hours — will change the environment. Those requirements take effect next month.
The officials encouraged schools to take steps to protect children — like having a representative from the Kansas Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force speak to students. That way foster kids, or kids without a stable parental figure, can be warned of the dangers, too.