A sexual predator used online games and ChatGPT to groom young boys
A criminal case in Uruguay exposes how online games and AI chatbots are reshaping
global online sexual exploitation
Warning: this article contains descriptions of child sexual abuse
When the police finally arrested Luis Carvajal, investigators not only found the usual digital tool kit of online predators seeking teenage victims – video games, social media accounts and WhatsApp – but a worrying new addition: ChatGPT.
A 35-year-old Uruguayan supermarket security guard living out of a cramped bedroom in his parents’ house in Canelones, Carvajal contacted hundreds of boys from across Latin America on Free Fire, a free mobile game in which up to 50 players compete to be the last player standing, between mid-2024 and March 2025.
After establishing friendships with the boys, Carvajal would move their conversations to WhatsApp to groom them privately, using ChatGPT to tailor his messages to each child based on the information he elicited from them. He coerced at least 30 teens into sending him sexual images or videos of themselves, and raped at least five in a local hotel. Most of his victims were aged between 11 and 15, according to the prosecutor handling the case, Irena Penza.
Through exclusive access to the court ruling, interviews with Penza and an anonymous source at the specialised police unit that handled the case, openDemocracy has examined how Carvajal’s grooming reflects a wider failure to recognise and prevent a form of abuse that is evolving alongside technology. Experts and officials working in child protection – both in Uruguay and further afield – have told us the case fits an emerging pattern of child sexual predators using digital tools to target victims.
Where abusers once lurked in parks and outside school gates, the Internet has given them access to far more potential victims, as well as greater anonymity and harder-to-trace tools. This has real-world implications; one in eight children worldwide is estimated to experience online grooming or non-consensual exposure to sexual images or videos each year – equivalent to ten cases every second – according to a 2024 study by the Childlight Global Child Safety Institute. In Latin America, the researchers found that nearly a fifth of children are victims.
Video games, long a central part of childhood, are increasingly the entry point for these crimes. Children are gaming from younger ages and at higher rates; 83% of five- to 12-year-olds in the US play video games for at least an hour a week, according to the 2025 report from the Entertainment Software Association. Where play was once limited to those in the same room, children now interact with strangers from around the world via headsets or live text. This shift from isolated play to global social spaces has created new opportunities for abuse, with similar cases recorded in Perú, India, the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia.
As was seen in Carvajal’s abuse, which often targeted boys from poorer families with promises of money or material goods, online abusers exploit existing vulnerabilities, including inequality, poverty, abandonment, neglect, violence, and impunity. “The virtual world is a reflection of the real world,” said Lydia Guarín, a Latin American child protection expert from Save the Children.
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The online predator
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