Child pornography will always exist as long as there is a demand for it without any available substitutions. And there will always be a demand for it as long as pedophiles exist. And pedophiles have always existed and as far as we know always will exist and are probably a lot larger part of the population than most people expect.

Like the war on drugs, this is a battle that is never going to end.

I wish some government agency, maybe NCMEC or someone else, would realize this and try actually catering to pedophiles as citizens of their country rather than pretending they are vermin that can be stomped out.

Imagine if a government put their vast resources into creating artificial child pornography so that people who want to look at child pornography (or perhaps aren't pedophiles but are just curious) have an outlet that doesn't actually involve children.

There are a million ways to do this. You could train a GAN on actual CP images that produce new original images without any actual victims, or maybe with enough talented researchers create one that never involved children to begin with.

You could pay some very talented CGI companies to create realistic child pornography, maybe with the help with actors that already look underaged but are not.

Or maybe even just commission some shotacon artists or cub furs artists off Inkbunny (although the community is already doing this.)

"Hey, we realize that you're sexually attracted to children and like all people have sexual desires that need to be fulfilled in order to be happy. We know you're not a bad person and we're sorry we can't give you real children to have sex with, but here are some links to artificial child pornography we've made so that you can be less sexually frustrated without breaking the law."

I really don't understand why, if the goal is to prevent the sexual exploitation of children, any government hasn't tried making photo-realistic synthetic child pornography. It seems like such an obvious solution that would actually make gains in reducing the consumption of child pornography.

I suspect most pedophiles who do consume child pornography would stick with a realistic ethically-made artificial alternative, if only to avoid possible prosecution.