News

One in 8 kids personally knows someone who’s been a target of a deepfake photo or video 

THE pre-artificial intelligence (AI) world is gone. Estimates suggest that already, as many as one in eight kids personally knows someone who has been the target of a deepfake photo or video, with numbers rising to one in four who have seen a sexualised deepfake of someone they recognise, either a friend or a celebrity. This is a real problem and it’s one that lawmakers are suddenly waking up to. 

In the 1980s, when I was a kid, it was a picture of a missing child on a milk carton from across the country that encapsulated parental fears. In 2026, it’s an AI-generated suggestive image of a loved one. 

The increasing availability of AI nudification tools, such as those associated with Grok, has fuelled skyrocketing reports of AI-generated child sexual abuse material — from roughly 4,700 in 2023 to over 440,000 in the first half of 2025 (1H25) alone, according to the National Centre on Missing and Exploited Children. 

This is horrific, grimy stuff. It’s particularly difficult to read about — and write about — as a mom, because the ability to shield your child from it feels so beyond your control. 

Parents already struggle just to keep kids off social media, get screens out of classrooms or lock up household devices at night. And that’s after a decade’s worth of data on social media’s impact on kids. 

Before we’ve even solved that prob- lem, AI is taking the world by storm — especially among the young. Nearly half (42%) of American teens report talking to AI chatbots as a friend or companion. 

The vast majority of students (86%) report using AI during the school year, according to Education Week. Even kids ages five to 12 are using generative AI. In several high-profile cases, parents said AI chatbots encouraged their teens to commit suicide. 

Too many parents are out of the loop. Polling from Common Sense Media shows that parents consistently underestimate their children’s use of AI. Schools, too. The same survey found that few schools had communicated — or arguably even developed — an AI policy. 

But there’s a shared sense of foreboding: Americans remain far more concerned (50%) than excited (10%) about the increased use of AI in daily life and the vast majority believe that they have little to no ability to control it (87%). 

Policymakers are on the move. 

On Jan 20, the Senate unanimously passed a bill, the Defiance Act, to allow victims of deepfake porn to sue the people who created the images. 

The UK and European Union (EU) are investigating whether Grok was used to generate sexually explicit deepfake images of women and children without their consent, violating their Online Safety Act. 

In the US, the Take It Down Act, signed into law by Congress last year, criminalised sexual deepfakes and requires platforms to remove the images within 48 hours; sharers could face prison time. 

In my home state of Texas, we have some of the most aggressive AI laws in the country. The Securing Children Online through Parental Empowerment (SCOPE) Act of 2024, among other things, requires platforms to implement a strategy to prevent minors from being exposed to “harmful material.” 

It’s been illegal since Sept 1, 2025 to create or distribute any sexually suggestive images without consent. Punishments range from felony charges and imprisonment to recurring fines. And starting this year, the Texas Responsible AI Governance Act (TRAIGA) goes into effect banning AI development with the sole intent to create deepfakes. 

Texas might not be known for its bipartisanship, but these efforts have been pushed in a bipartisan manner and framed (correctly) as protecting Texas children and parental rights. 

“In today’s digital age, we must continue to fight to protect Texas kids from deceptive and exploitative technology,” said Attorney General (AG) Ken Paxton, announcing his investigation into Meta AI studio and Character.AI. 

But we don’t know yet if these laws will be effective. For one, it’s all still so new. For another, the technology keeps changing. 

And it doesn’t help that the creators of AI are tight with Washington. Big tech companies are the big boys in Washington, DC these days; their lobbying has grown significantly. 

Closer to home, Texas Democrats are concerned that Paxton might not push Elon Musk over the Grok debate given the billionaire’s thick Grand Old Party (GOP) connections. 

Under the US President Donald Trump Administration, the Federal Trade Commission launched a formal inquiry into Big Tech, asking them to detail how they test and monitor for potential negative impacts of chatbots on kids. 

But that’s essentially self-disclosing; these same companies haven’t exactly inspired confidence on that score with social media, or in the case of Grok, in deepfake child nudes. 

More outside accountability is required. To that end, a multi-prong approach is required. I’d like to see Health and Human Services incorporate AI’s challenge to kids’ well-being as part of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement. 

A bipartisan commission could explore AI age limits, school poli- cies and children’s relational skills. (Concerningly, there was little mention of AI in MAHA’s comprehensive report on child health last year.) 

But even with federal and state action, the reality is that much of the AI world will be navigated by parents ourselves. While there are steps that could limit children’s exposure to AI at younger ages, avoidance alone is not the answer. 

We are only at the beginning and already AI technology is unavoidable. It’s in our computers, homes, schools, toys and work and the AI age is only just beginning. 

More scaffolding is required. The deep work will fall to parents. Parents have always needed to raise children with strong spines, thick skins and moral virtue. 

The struggles of each era change, but that doesn’t. We will now need raise children who have the sense of purpose, critical-thinking abilities and relational know-how to live with this new and already ubiquitous technology — with its great promise and dangers. 

It’s a brave new world out there, indeed. — Bloomberg 

• This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. 

• This article first appeared in The Malaysian Reserve weekly print edition

The post Too many kids know someone who’s been deepfaked appeared first on The Malaysian Reserve.

One in 8 kids personally knows someone who’s been a target of a deepfake photo or video 

THE pre-artificial intelligence (AI) world is gone. Estimates suggest that already, as many as one in eight kids personally knows someone who has been the target of a deepfake photo or video, with numbers rising to one in four who have seen a sexualised deepfake of someone they recognise, either a friend or a celebrity. This is a real problem and it’s one that lawmakers are suddenly waking up to. 

In the 1980s, when I was a kid, it was a picture of a missing child on a milk carton from across the country that encapsulated parental fears. In 2026, it’s an AI-generated suggestive image of a loved one. 

The increasing availability of AI nudification tools, such as those associated with Grok, has fuelled skyrocketing reports of AI-generated child sexual abuse material — from roughly 4,700 in 2023 to over 440,000 in the first half of 2025 (1H25) alone, according to the National Centre on Missing and Exploited Children. 

This is horrific, grimy stuff. It’s particularly difficult to read about — and write about — as a mom, because the ability to shield your child from it feels so beyond your control. 

Parents already struggle just to keep kids off social media, get screens out of classrooms or lock up household devices at night. And that’s after a decade’s worth of data on social media’s impact on kids. 

Before we’ve even solved that prob- lem, AI is taking the world by storm — especially among the young. Nearly half (42%) of American teens report talking to AI chatbots as a friend or companion. 

The vast majority of students (86%) report using AI during the school year, according to Education Week. Even kids ages five to 12 are using generative AI. In several high-profile cases, parents said AI chatbots encouraged their teens to commit suicide. 

Too many parents are out of the loop. Polling from Common Sense Media shows that parents consistently underestimate their children’s use of AI. Schools, too. The same survey found that few schools had communicated — or arguably even developed — an AI policy. 

But there’s a shared sense of foreboding: Americans remain far more concerned (50%) than excited (10%) about the increased use of AI in daily life and the vast majority believe that they have little to no ability to control it (87%). 

Policymakers are on the move. 

On Jan 20, the Senate unanimously passed a bill, the Defiance Act, to allow victims of deepfake porn to sue the people who created the images. 

The UK and European Union (EU) are investigating whether Grok was used to generate sexually explicit deepfake images of women and children without their consent, violating their Online Safety Act. 

In the US, the Take It Down Act, signed into law by Congress last year, criminalised sexual deepfakes and requires platforms to remove the images within 48 hours; sharers could face prison time. 

In my home state of Texas, we have some of the most aggressive AI laws in the country. The Securing Children Online through Parental Empowerment (SCOPE) Act of 2024, among other things, requires platforms to implement a strategy to prevent minors from being exposed to “harmful material.” 

It’s been illegal since Sept 1, 2025 to create or distribute any sexually suggestive images without consent. Punishments range from felony charges and imprisonment to recurring fines. And starting this year, the Texas Responsible AI Governance Act (TRAIGA) goes into effect banning AI development with the sole intent to create deepfakes. 

Texas might not be known for its bipartisanship, but these efforts have been pushed in a bipartisan manner and framed (correctly) as protecting Texas children and parental rights. 

“In today’s digital age, we must continue to fight to protect Texas kids from deceptive and exploitative technology,” said Attorney General (AG) Ken Paxton, announcing his investigation into Meta AI studio and Character.AI. 

But we don’t know yet if these laws will be effective. For one, it’s all still so new. For another, the technology keeps changing. 

And it doesn’t help that the creators of AI are tight with Washington. Big tech companies are the big boys in Washington, DC these days; their lobbying has grown significantly. 

Closer to home, Texas Democrats are concerned that Paxton might not push Elon Musk over the Grok debate given the billionaire’s thick Grand Old Party (GOP) connections. 

Under the US President Donald Trump Administration, the Federal Trade Commission launched a formal inquiry into Big Tech, asking them to detail how they test and monitor for potential negative impacts of chatbots on kids. 

But that’s essentially self-disclosing; these same companies haven’t exactly inspired confidence on that score with social media, or in the case of Grok, in deepfake child nudes. 

More outside accountability is required. To that end, a multi-prong approach is required. I’d like to see Health and Human Services incorporate AI’s challenge to kids’ well-being as part of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement. 

A bipartisan commission could explore AI age limits, school poli- cies and children’s relational skills. (Concerningly, there was little mention of AI in MAHA’s comprehensive report on child health last year.) 

But even with federal and state action, the reality is that much of the AI world will be navigated by parents ourselves. While there are steps that could limit children’s exposure to AI at younger ages, avoidance alone is not the answer. 

We are only at the beginning and already AI technology is unavoidable. It’s in our computers, homes, schools, toys and work and the AI age is only just beginning. 

More scaffolding is required. The deep work will fall to parents. Parents have always needed to raise children with strong spines, thick skins and moral virtue. 

The struggles of each era change, but that doesn’t. We will now need raise children who have the sense of purpose, critical-thinking abilities and relational know-how to live with this new and already ubiquitous technology — with its great promise and dangers. 

It’s a brave new world out there, indeed. — Bloomberg 

• This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. 

• This article first appeared in The Malaysian Reserve weekly print edition

The post Too many kids know someone who’s been deepfaked appeared first on The Malaysian Reserve.

THE tariffs imposed by the US became the big economic story of 2025, as much for what they didn’t do as for the disruption they engendered and outcry they caused. They might be shouldering too great a burden. 

There hasn’t been a global recession, yet. Nor, despite dire warnings, has there been much by way of retaliation, except for some actions by China. 

And trade-dependent nations like Vietnam and Singapore, far from being forced out of business, reported respectable growth figures at the close of the year. 

Looks can be deceiving. A mix of pared-down duties, exemptions, and favourable inner workings of the shipping industry have taken the bite out of US President Donald Trump’s actions. 

This doesn’t mean things are great. “The peak of the storm may have passed, but as Dorothy observed in The Wizard of Oz, ‘we’re not in Kansas anymore,’” wrote Gita Gopinath, a former first deputy MD of the International Monetary Fund and Brent Neiman, a professor at the University of Chicago, in a December paper. 

Singapore, which rose to prosperity in an era of free trade, can take heart from recent readings. GDP rose 4.8% in 2025, stronger than expected. So resilient has growth been that economists are beginning to game out when the central bank will tighten policy. 

The city-state’s leaders are, nonetheless, warning citizens that the tariffs represent a fundamental break from practices of the last half-century. The duties weren’t the act of a friend, according to the prime minister (PM). 

The country, home to one of the world’s busiest container ports and regional headquarters for an array of multinational corporations, will need to rethink its development strategy. 

Far from slowing down, Vietnam — seller of everything to America from shoes to computers — is surging. Growth topped 8% in the fourth quarter (Q4), exceeding all estimates and moving at the fastest clip since 2011. 

Last month, exports jumped by almost a quarter and manufacturing turned in a fine performance. The country’s trade surplus with theUS,agapthatputitinthe crosshairs of the White House, widened to a record US$134 billion (RM544 billion). 

Hanoi caught a break by engaging with Trump soon after the initial levies — a hefty 46% — were unveiled. It settled for 20%, roughly the level of most Southeast Asian nations. 

How has the global economy been able to survive so far? An important part of the answer, according to Gopinath and Neiman, was the discrepancy between the statutory tariff rate and the rate actually paid. The average was about 27.4% in late September, but importers incurred only around half that figure. 

The difference is driven partly by shipment lags: Several months may pass before a newly unveiled tariff rate applies to goods, something described as an “on the water exemption.” 

Secondly, specific products or companies have been offered breaks; some firms are treated more favourably if they intend to invest in manufacturing in the US. 

And, despite Trump’s frequent sniping at Canada and Mexico, a large chunk of trade between those countries and the US falls under the pact that replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) — and kept many of its key elements. 

None of this means the global economy is set for smooth sailing. Writing in the Financial Times last week, Gopinath stressed that the damage from the trade war may take years to fully materialise. 

The world economy is forecast to grow 3.1% this year, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), little changed from 2025. 

Despite the cry that tariffs amounted to a “sell America moment,” demand for US assets among foreigners has held up partly owing to the boom in artificial intelligence (AI). While the dollar had a rough year, the Treasury market had its best one since 2020. 

There’s plenty about Trump’s agenda to dislike. The president has been disdainful of the independence of the US Federal Reserve (Fed) and has little enthusiasm for the security alliances that support the dollar’s role as the global reserve currency. 

“I kind of wonder whether we are a bit fixated with tariffs,” Linda Tesar, a professor at the University of Michigan, told a panel at the American Economic Association’s annual meeting on Jan 3 in Philadelphia. 

Proxies for globalisation like Vietnam and Singapore have a right to be uneasy. Therest of the world economy can take encouragement from their resilience and hope that their performance is more signal than noise. Tariffs make for troubling headlines. The fine print provides a welcome balm, for now. — Bloomberg 

• This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. 

• This article first appeared in The Malaysian Reserve weekly print edition

The post What humming export machines mean for the trade war appeared first on The Malaysian Reserve.

THE tariffs imposed by the US became the big economic story of 2025, as much for what they didn’t do as for the disruption they engendered and outcry they caused. They might be shouldering too great a burden. 

There hasn’t been a global recession, yet. Nor, despite dire warnings, has there been much by way of retaliation, except for some actions by China. 

And trade-dependent nations like Vietnam and Singapore, far from being forced out of business, reported respectable growth figures at the close of the year. 

Looks can be deceiving. A mix of pared-down duties, exemptions, and favourable inner workings of the shipping industry have taken the bite out of US President Donald Trump’s actions. 

This doesn’t mean things are great. “The peak of the storm may have passed, but as Dorothy observed in The Wizard of Oz, ‘we’re not in Kansas anymore,’” wrote Gita Gopinath, a former first deputy MD of the International Monetary Fund and Brent Neiman, a professor at the University of Chicago, in a December paper. 

Singapore, which rose to prosperity in an era of free trade, can take heart from recent readings. GDP rose 4.8% in 2025, stronger than expected. So resilient has growth been that economists are beginning to game out when the central bank will tighten policy. 

The city-state’s leaders are, nonetheless, warning citizens that the tariffs represent a fundamental break from practices of the last half-century. The duties weren’t the act of a friend, according to the prime minister (PM). 

The country, home to one of the world’s busiest container ports and regional headquarters for an array of multinational corporations, will need to rethink its development strategy. 

Far from slowing down, Vietnam — seller of everything to America from shoes to computers — is surging. Growth topped 8% in the fourth quarter (Q4), exceeding all estimates and moving at the fastest clip since 2011. 

Last month, exports jumped by almost a quarter and manufacturing turned in a fine performance. The country’s trade surplus with theUS,agapthatputitinthe crosshairs of the White House, widened to a record US$134 billion (RM544 billion). 

Hanoi caught a break by engaging with Trump soon after the initial levies — a hefty 46% — were unveiled. It settled for 20%, roughly the level of most Southeast Asian nations. 

How has the global economy been able to survive so far? An important part of the answer, according to Gopinath and Neiman, was the discrepancy between the statutory tariff rate and the rate actually paid. The average was about 27.4% in late September, but importers incurred only around half that figure. 

The difference is driven partly by shipment lags: Several months may pass before a newly unveiled tariff rate applies to goods, something described as an “on the water exemption.” 

Secondly, specific products or companies have been offered breaks; some firms are treated more favourably if they intend to invest in manufacturing in the US. 

And, despite Trump’s frequent sniping at Canada and Mexico, a large chunk of trade between those countries and the US falls under the pact that replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) — and kept many of its key elements. 

None of this means the global economy is set for smooth sailing. Writing in the Financial Times last week, Gopinath stressed that the damage from the trade war may take years to fully materialise. 

The world economy is forecast to grow 3.1% this year, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), little changed from 2025. 

Despite the cry that tariffs amounted to a “sell America moment,” demand for US assets among foreigners has held up partly owing to the boom in artificial intelligence (AI). While the dollar had a rough year, the Treasury market had its best one since 2020. 

There’s plenty about Trump’s agenda to dislike. The president has been disdainful of the independence of the US Federal Reserve (Fed) and has little enthusiasm for the security alliances that support the dollar’s role as the global reserve currency. 

“I kind of wonder whether we are a bit fixated with tariffs,” Linda Tesar, a professor at the University of Michigan, told a panel at the American Economic Association’s annual meeting on Jan 3 in Philadelphia. 

Proxies for globalisation like Vietnam and Singapore have a right to be uneasy. Therest of the world economy can take encouragement from their resilience and hope that their performance is more signal than noise. Tariffs make for troubling headlines. The fine print provides a welcome balm, for now. — Bloomberg 

• This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. 

• This article first appeared in The Malaysian Reserve weekly print edition

The post What humming export machines mean for the trade war appeared first on The Malaysian Reserve.