The UK government is set to make creating non-consensual deepfake porn, and preparing technology elements to create such content, criminal offences.
On January 7, 2025 the British Ministry of Justice announced that a new offence will be created as part of its Crime and Policing Bill, which will make taking intimate images without consent, and installing equipment with the intent to create non-consensual deepfake porn, illegal.
The ministry said that abusers will face “the full force of the law”, and that perpetrators could face up to two years in prison.
The announcement marks the intensification of authorities cracking down on deepfake porn, which has become a huge issue in the past few years as AI technology made creating deepfake content easy.
It was already illegal to share or threaten to share non-consensual deepfake porn and other intimate images in the UK, with intent to harm those depicted in it. When passed, the new deepfake laws will mean that people could potentially be jailed even if they don’t demonstrate intent to distribute such images.
“It is unacceptable that one in three women have been victims of online abuse. This demeaning and disgusting form of chauvinism must not become normalised, and as part of our Plan for Change we are bearing down on violence against women – whatever form it takes,” the UK’s victims minister Alex Davies-Jones said.
The move was welcomed by law firm Mishcon de Reya, which advises victim-survivors of intimate image abuse.
The firm said there is “a lag between what the law currently protects and what technology enables people to do and the government needs to ensure that it futureproofs any legislation by pre-empting technological advances and potential loopholes which might be exploited, to help combat the alarming rates of misogyny and violence against women and girls in the UK.”
The UK government has not announced when the Crime and Policing Bill containing the new deepfake offences will be introduced to Parliament, saying it will be done “when parliamentary time allows”.
The governments of many countries have cracked down on nonconsensual deepfake porn recently. South Korea made watching deepfake porn illegal, after authorities declared a “digital sex crime epidemic” in the country.
Major internet search engine companies have recently attempted to make accessing deepfake porn through their search functions more difficult. However, investigations recently showed that accessing instructions on how to create deepfake porn was still straightforward via most widely-used search platforms.
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