Women need protection from ‘vile exploitation’
North Shore MP Felicity Wilson will introduce a bill into the NSW Parliament when it resumes on 5 August that seeks to criminalise the creation and distribution of sexually explicit ‘deepfake’ material which is made with artificial intelligence.
Ms Wilson’s Crimes Amendment (Deepfake Sexual Material) Bill 2025 will add new offences for producing and/or distributing sexually explicit deepfakes. The offences would cover threats to share deepfakes without consent – including private sharing and not just online distribution, allow court ordered removal and destruction of synthetic abuse material, and define deepfakes as generating or altering the image that falsely depicts a real person in a sexual context.
“This is a form of sexual abuse,” Ms Wilson said. “If you fake someone’s body or voice without their consent, you’re violating their autonomy and causing real harm.”
Ms Wilson said the government had failed to respond to the rise of deepfake abuse, allowing perpetrators to act while women and girls were left exposed and unprotected.
“Imagine being a teenage girl, going into class knowing that your face has been attached to pornographic images that have been shared with your classmates,” Ms Wilson said. “That has immediate and lasting impacts on your mental health and wellbeing. This is happening right now in our schools.
“Technology is being used to target, degrade and abuse women, and we need to act.”
A NSW Parliamentary report released in April found that NSW does not have offences that expressly prohibit the production and distribution of sexually explicit deepfakes of adults. Other states had moved to criminalise this type of abuse, Ms Wilson said. “It is shocking and unacceptable that NSW laws have not kept up to date with technological change.”
Ms Wilson, who is the shadow minister for women, said the legislation aimed to deliver long-overdue protections for victims who have too often been left powerless and unheard.
“If it’s not your body, it’s not your right, and that principle must be written into law,” she said. “Women and girls across NSW deserve better. This Bill will help stop the abuse and protect people from this vile exploitation.”
