People who share so-called "deepfakes," which are sexually explicit images or videos that have been altered to resemble someone else without that person's consent, will be among the first to be specifically criminalised under a planned amendment to the UK's new Online Safety Bill, and they could spend time in jail.
The UK government said that it would also introduce a package of new regulations to combat a variety of abusive online behaviours, such as the installation of tools like covert cameras to photograph or record pictures of people without their permission.
These will cover the practise known as "downblousing," in which a woman's top is photographed without her knowledge or consent. In accordance with earlier moves made to punish "upskirting," or photographing up a woman's dress without her knowledge, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) stated that this fulfils British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's vow to criminalise the practise.
UK Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Secretary Dominic Raab stated, "We must do more to safeguard women and girls, from persons who capture or distort private images in order to hound or humiliate them."
"Our amendments will provide police and prosecutors with the authority they need to prosecute these criminals and protect women and girls from such heinous abuse," he claimed.
The Online Safety Bill amendment aims to expand the definition of current intimate image offences so that more offenders will be prosecuted and may get jail time.
A quarter of adults in England and Wales have reported receiving threats to share intimate photos, according to official statistics. Police have received more than 28,000 reports of people disclosing private sexual images without permission between April 2015 and December 2021.
The most recent MoJ reform plan comes in response to mounting worries on a worldwide scale about the misuse of new technology, notably the rise in "deepfakes."
These frequently entail creating and disseminating false, frequently sexual, photographs or videos of a person using editing software without that person's consent.
