INTERPOL sounds alarm over AI-Driven Sextortion in Ghana

INTERPOL sounded the alarm over AI-driven sextortion in Ghana, according to its latest African Cyberthreat Assessment Report. The report, sighted by The Chronicle, reveals that financial losses among Ghanaian victims aged 18 to 24 years increased fivefold in 2025, driven largely by criminals using artificial intelligence to create fake sexually explicit images from victims' social media photographs, before demanding money to stop the fabricated content from being shared.

The findings are contained in INTERPOL's African Cyberthreat Assessment Report 2026, published on the organization's website, which warns that artificial intelligence is now linked to 55 percent of reported cybercrime across Africa, making cyberattacks faster, more sophisticated, and increasingly difficult to detect. INTERPOL identifies digital sextortion as one of the fastest-growing cyber threats on the continent, warning that cybercriminals are increasingly exploiting artificial intelligence to manufacture realistic intimate images using nothing more than photographs obtained from victims' social media accounts. The fabricated images are then used to blackmail victims into making repeated payments, often through mobile money platforms or cryptocurrency, under threats that the content will be circulated to relatives, employers, or published online.