Study finds 1 in 7 adults experienced sextortion

The Conversation has published a piece drawing on RMIT University research originally released in mid-2024 in the peer-reviewed journal Computers in Human Behavior. The study surveyed more than 16,000 adults across ten countries and found 14.5% have experienced sextortion -- threats to share intimate images to coerce payment, more images, or unwanted acts -- and 4.8% admitted to perpetrating it. LGBTQ+ people, men, and younger respondents reported higher rates of both victimisation and perpetration, per the study. Victimisation was most common in the US, Australia, Mexico, and South Korea.

The Conversation article frames generative AI as an amplifying factor: synthetic-media tooling lowers the cost and skill required to produce convincing impersonations and fabricated sexual imagery, increasing attack scale and reducing the evidentiary clarity of reported incidents. The Australian eSafety Commissioner launched an awareness campaign that uses AI-generated videos to illustrate how perpetrators lure victims, per the article.

Industry-pattern observations: For platform safety teams, higher reported prevalence means larger volumes of image-based abuse claims and more sophisticated synthetic-media evidence. Technical priorities include provenance metadata, improved triage and human-review capacity, and coordination with victim-support organisations and regulators. Detection models trained on existing datasets face distribution-shift risk as synthetic media quality improves, per general industry analysis.

The Conversation article summarises survey results; it does not publish the raw dataset or technical benchmarks for synthetic-media detection. The underlying study was published in 2024; recirculation with the AI framing reflects growing attention to GenAI's role in image-based abuse, not a new primary finding.