Spark's becoming the first New Zealand telco to block all child sexual abuse images made with artificial intelligence.

It already stops access to photo-realistic material made by AI, but this move will extend to images which have a cartoon or artistic style.

The website list comes from the Internet Watch Foundation which has seen a 400 percent increase in this type of material.

Spark Sustainability Director Leela Ashford says it blocks the sites automatically.

She says the list can include tens of thousands of websites.  

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