The cyber criminals dupe victims into sending nude images and then extort them.
The Home Office said fake images are being used to blackmail children and force them to livestream further abuse.
An analyst who removes child sexual abuse content from the internet says she is always trying to stay "one step ahead" of the "bad guys".
Britain will make it illegal to use artificial intelligence tools that create child sexual abuse images.
Young children are now more exposed to being groomed online due to a reliance on tech devices in lockdown, a charity has claimed.
CSAM hosting around the world rose 64 percent last year, and a surge in the United States put it second behind the Netherlands, a new report found.
Online child sexual abuse is at record high levels, according to exclusive figures given to ITV News.
Internet Watch Foundation says amount of material showing most extreme form of sexual abuse has doubled since 2020
Images of children aged as young as seven being abused online have risen by almost two thirds while the number of webpages found to contain the most extreme material has doubled in recent years, according to a report.
IWF analysts have seen accelerating numbers of public reports of child sexual abuse, with more people staying and working from home among contributing factors.