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By Dannielle Kelly, Head of Government Affairs and Law Enforcement Outreach, ICMEC Australia
Children experiencing AI-facilitated sexual extortion or solicitation are now more likely to tell an AI chatbot about it than a teacher, a counsellor, the police or a helpline. That is one of the findings from national research ICMEC Australia released last week with the Australian Cybercrime Observatory at the University of Adelaide, which found at least one in twenty-five young Australians under 18 has experienced this kind of abuse. It means AI has become part of how children process what is happening to them, often before any adult knows. Child protection now has to account for this form of disclosure, not just the abuse itself.
A week ago, I was in a boardroom in Sydney with the SaferAI for Children Coalition, the group ICMEC Australia set up two years ago to work through what AI means for children, and what needs to happen so it does more good than harm. Yesterday, being in the audience at the University of Sydney when the Prime Minister announced a new Office of AI, bringing Australia's response to AI under one roof for the first time, felt like things were really coming together.
Those two things are connected. The coordination the Prime Minister described yesterday, one framework instead of a sector-by-sector patchwork, is close to what our coalition has already been building on a smaller scale for two years.
At ICMEC Australia we call this approach sword and shield: use AI as a sword against people who exploit children, and build a shield around children from the risks AI creates on its own. The new Office of AI needs to do both, with a mandate that makes that explicit.
For the sword, that means backing law enforcement to use AI to identify offenders and victims faster, and investing in the tools that let police act on the scale of the problem, not just the visible edge of it. For the shield, it means treating the coalition's two years of groundwork, the nudify app ban, work toward a digital duty of care, and early regulation of AI companion chatbots through the eSafety Commissioner, as a foundation to build on rather than a separate track to coordinate around. It means a child safety lead within the Office of AI with a direct line to that work. The standards, investment settings and guardrails the Office sets need to be tested against what we now know: that for some children, an AI chatbot is the first place they disclose abuse, not the last.
Australia is already a leader in this space. As the Prime Minister pointed out, Australia has done this before with other big technological shifts, from civil aviation in the 1920s to genetics in the 1990s. The social media reforms put this country ahead of the rest of the world, and they happened because parliamentarians from across the political spectrum backed reform when the evidence demanded it. That is the standard the new Office of AI now inherits.
One in four Australians has experienced child sexual abuse in their lifetime (Australian Child Maltreatment Study, 2023), and the horrific childcare cases in the news this week have shown how close that risk sits to ordinary family life. AI does not create that risk. It changes how it plays out, and increasingly, it changes who a child tells first.
Children are in every one of our families and most of our households. The new Office of AI has a genuine chance to get this right from the start, with a coalition, a research base and political support in place. It should not have to start from zero. ICMEC Australia is ready to keep building with it.
About the Author
Dannielle Kelly (Danni) is the Head of Government Affairs and Law Enforcement Outreach at ICMEC Australia, where she leads programs to strengthen how police and governments respond to child exploitation. With more than 17 years of law enforcement experience, including senior roles with the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation (ACCCE), Danni brings frontline credibility and strategic insight to one of Australia's most critical child protection challenges, ensuring that when families seek help, they are met with a consistent, capable response
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ICMEC Australia acknowledges Traditional Owners throughout Australia and their continuing connection to lands, waters and communities. We pay our respects to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, and Elders past and present.
