Amazon Found ‘High Volume’ Of Child Sex Abuse Material in AI Training Data
The tech giant reported hundreds of thousands of cases of suspected child sexual abuse material, but won’t say where it came from
Amazon, the largest seller of cloud-computing services, also builds its own artificial intelligence models.
Photographer: Nathan Howard/Getty ImagesAmazon.com Inc. reported hundreds of thousands of pieces of content last year that it believed included child sexual abuse, which it found in data gathered to improve its artificial intelligence models. Though Amazon removed the content before training its models, child safety officials said the company has not provided information about its source, potentially hindering law enforcement from finding perpetrators and protecting victims.
Throughout last year, Amazon detected the material in its AI training data and reported it to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, or NCMEC. The organization, which was established by Congress to field tips about child sexual abuse and share them with law enforcement, recently started tracking the number of reports specifically tied to AI products and their development. In 2025, NCMEC saw at least a fifteen-fold increase in these AI-related reports, with “the vast majority” coming from Amazon. The findings haven’t been previously reported.