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Three websites used to create abuse imagery had received 100,000 monthly visits from Australians, watchdog says.

Internet users in Australia have been blocked from accessing several websites that used artificial intelligence to create child sexual exploitation material, the country’s internet regulator has announced.

The three “nudify” sites withdrew from Australia following an official warning, eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said on Thursday.

Grant’s office said the sites had been receiving approximately 100,000 visits a month from Australians and featured in high-profile cases of AI-generated child sex abuse imagery involving Australian school students.

Grant said such “nudify” services, which allow users to make images of real people appear naked using AI, have had a “devastating” effect in Australian schools.

“We took enforcement action in September because this provider failed to put in safeguards to prevent its services being used to create child sexual exploitation material and were even marketing features like undressing ‘any girl,’ and with options for ‘schoolgirl’ image generation and features such as ‘sex mode,’” Grand said in a statement.

The development comes after Grant’s office issued a formal warning to the United Kingdom-based company behind the sites in September, threatening civil penalties of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars ($32.2m) if it did not introduce safeguards to prevent image-based abuse.

Grant said Hugging Face, a hosting platform for AI models, had separately also taken steps to comply with Australian law, including changing its terms of service to require account holders to take steps to minimise the risks of misuse involving their platforms.

Australia has been at the forefront of global efforts to prevent the online harm of children, banning social media for under-16s and cracking down on apps used for stalking and creating deepfake images.

The use of AI to create non-consensual sexually explicit images has been a growing concern amid the rapid proliferation of platforms capable of creating photo-realistic material at the click of a mouse.

In a survey carried out by the US-based advocacy group Thorn last year, 10 percent of respondents aged 13-20 reported knowing someone who had deepfake nude imagery created of them, while 6 percent said they had been a direct victim of such abuse.

Margit Lake sneaked “multiple miniature bottles” of vodka onto the plane before it took off from San Francisco for London Heathrow, and had to be taken to hospital upon arrival

A United Airlines stewardess was ten times the legal limit to fly after downing a vast quantity of vodka on a transatlantic jet.

Margit Lake, 56, sneaked “multiple miniature bottles” of the spirit onto the ten-hour flight from San Francisco to Heathrow on 17 October. She drank some and needed to be taken to hospital after the Boeing 777 landed in west London.

A court heard the Californian flight attendant had low blood pressure and paramedics “smelt alcohol on her breath.” A blood test later revealed Lake had 216 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres in her blood — more than ten times the legal limit.

Uxbridge Magistrates’ Court heard yesterday Lake, who had worked for United Airlines for 26 years, resigned from her job following the misdemeanour.

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The legal limit for flight attendants in the UK is 20 milligrams per 100 millilitres of blood, the court was told. Wearing a black cardigan there, Lake admitted performing an aviation function when over the alcohol limit.

Ben Lansbury, defending, said Lake had been feeling “isolated”, was estranged from her family and “had been dealing with grief.” Mr Lansbury said: “She had the alcohol because she needed to calm down. It was something of a shock to her as to what happened. She deeply regrets what happened.

“Ms Lake has been attending Alcoholics Anonymous almost daily since the last hearing. She is supported by colleagues here in the UK and they sit in the back of the court.”

Magistrate Tony Delliston told her: “We are not going to commit this to the crown court. We can deal with this here. You are not going to prison. We are going to deal with this with a financial penalty.”

Lake was fined £1,461 financial penalty, a £584 victim surcharge and £85 in court costs.

• It comes as a TUI flight attendant was left seriously injured following a horror fall from a plane at East Midlands Airport after the flight steps were pushed away. The woman, a senior crew member who had over 36 years of experience, was closing the aircraft’s front door when she put her left foot on the steps. Despite her best efforts to hang onto the door, she fell through the gap and to the ground, breaking multiple bones, an Air Accident Investigations Branch (AAIB) report has revealed. The incident occurred on December 16, 2024, with the flight bound for Lanzarote being delayed after the accident. The AAIB investigation found the step removal occurred despite the aircraft door being open.