Reports of image-based sexual abuse and explicit deepfakes to the Metropolitan Police have more than doubled in the last five years, new figures show as the Home Office promised to crack down on offenders. The Metropolitan Police received 120 per cent more complaints about non-consensual intimate image abuse (NCII) , according to FOI data obtained by online safety provider Verifymy. The safety provider warned that the rapid rise of AI-powered “nudification” tools, used to remove people’s clothes in photos, was making it easier to create and share realistic, sexually explicit images without consent. Some 1,766 NCII complaints were made last year in Greater London, a 17 per cent rise from 1,523 the year before, and more than double the 805 recorded in 2020, according to Met complaint data seen by The Independent. These findings come months after Ofcom launched an investigation into the Grok AI chatbot on X (formerly Twitter) being used to create and share sexual deepfakes of real people, including children.…