Paris (France) (AFP) – Tens of thousands of intimate images of women have been traded without the subjects’ consent in Telegram groups and channels, researchers said Wednesday, calling for the platform to combat the practice. Campaign group AI Forensics said it found almost 25,000 active users in a six-week study of Spanish and Italian groups who were sharing images such as unclothed women, often exchanged for cash.
The researchers tracked more than 80,000 files shared across 16 Telegram channels between December 2025 and February 2026. Almost 75 percent of them were photos, with 25 percent video files and one percent audio recordings. The files were “mostly sexually explicit,” AI Forensics told AFP, with some including images of teenage girls. Some of the pictures and videos were real images, while others were “deepfakes” generated with AI tools.
The study’s authors also found that participants in the Telegram groups were engaged in practices including “doxxing” — revealing personal information — or coordinated harassment campaigns. Some members called for the women depicted to be raped or discussed sexual images of children. Many of the images being shared in the groups came from other platforms including TikTok, Instagram, or Snapchat.
“Social media platforms or other messaging apps function as sources of raw material, while Telegram appears to serve as a hub for the organisation, amplification, and circulation of abusive content,” the authors wrote. They criticised Telegram for its failure to prevent the groups persisting on its platform. “During the observation period, several groups were shut down by Telegram only to reopen under the same names just a few hours later, suggesting that Telegram’s moderation mechanisms are insufficient,” the authors said.
“All the groups were active” at the time of writing the report, AI Forensics told AFP. They highlighted that Telegram combines privacy features such as end-to-end encryption, in which only the sender and addressee of messages can read them, with mass distribution capabilities – including the ability for channel operators to charge subscriptions or one-off fees to access their content. This was “shaping the conditions under which abusive behaviour can develop with a relatively high sense of security and impunity,” the authors said.
AI Forensics called on the European Union to classify Telegram as a “very large online platform” (VLOP), which would subject it to stricter oversight under the Digital Services Act (DSA). Telegram told AFP that “sharing non-consensual intimate images, including pornographic deepfakes, is strictly forbidden by Telegram’s terms of use”. It said its “moderation systems are more effective to prevent mass distribution of harmful content than those of the currently designated VLOPs”.
The platform’s co-founder, Russian-born Pavel Durov, was arrested in France in 2024 and is under formal investigation by French authorities. He has denied allegations of complicity in running an online platform that allowed illicit transactions, images of child sex abuse, and other illegal content.
© 2024 AFP
