Proposed Deepfake Laws (NSW)

On 7 August 2025, the NSW government introduced the Crimes Amendment (Deepfake Sexual Material) Bill into the Legislative Assembly.  The Bill is designed to address the growing threat posed by technology that allows individuals to generate sexually explicit deepfake images of people without their consent. This page outlines the changes the Bill will make, if passed, and the reasons for its introduction.

Deepfake material

Deepfakes are media—images, videos, audio, or text—generated or altered using artificial intelligence (especially machine learning and deep learning) to create realistic but fake content.

Deepfakes have been around since 2017, but advances in generative adversarial networks (GANs) and large-scale AI models have made high-quality deepfakes increasingly accessible. Free or inexpensive apps now allow almost anyone to swap faces, mimic voices, and fabricate realistic videos without advanced technical skills.

Many types of deepfake material are now being made. The technology is used to generate fake speeches by politicians and celebrities, to commit scams and to impersonate individuals. However, the most commonly reported type of deepfake is pornographic content that uses the faces, bodies and voices of real people without their consent.  

The creation and distribution of deepfake pornography is a violation of privacy that may lead to psychological and social harm, including bullying, harassment, anxiety and depression.

Existing criminal offences involving the distribution of intimate content were not drafted with AI technology in mind and do not adequately cover the range of behaviours that are now occurring.

Expanded definition of ‘intimate material’

Section 91 of the Crimes Act 1900 currently defines an ‘intimate image’ as:

• an image of a person’s private parts, or of a person engaged in a private act in circumstances where a reasonable person would reasonably expect to be afforded privacy; or
• an image that has been altered to appear to show a person’s private parts or a person engaged in a private act in circumstances where a reasonable person would reasonably expect to be afforded privacy.

The new legislation will include definitions of a broader range of material, including intimate material, sexually explicit deepfake audio, and sexually explicit deepfake text.

It will also include a new definition of the word ‘produce’ which will includes the digital creation of material ‘by generating, altering, or manipulating it’, and a new definition of the word ‘image’ that explicitly includes ‘an image that has been digitally created’.   

Extension of criminal offences

There are three existing offences in the Crimes Act 1900 whose operation would be expanded by the introduction of these new definitions.

These offences are:

• distributing intimate images (section 91P of the Crimes Act 1900)
• threatening to distribute intimate images (section 91Q of the Crimes Act 1900)
• possession of intimate images with intent to distribute (section 91R of the Crimes Act 1900)

If the Bill passes, these three offences, which carry a maximum penalty of imprisonment for three years and a fine of 100 penalty units, will explicitly apply to the use and threatened use of deepfake material.

This means that instead of deepfakes falling into a ‘grey area’ where courts may or may not find that the material amounts to an ‘intimate image’, the use of deepfake material will now be clearly and unambiguously captured by these offences.

Extension of removal powers

Section 91S of the Crimes Act 1900 gives courts the power to order a person who has been found guilty of one of the above offences to remove, retract, recover, delete or destroy the intimate images. With the expanded definition, this provision will explicitly apply to offences involving deepfake material.

Other jurisdictions

Other Australian jurisdictions have taken different approaches to the inclusion of AI-generated material in criminal offences involving intimate material.

In Western Australia, the criminal law includes AI-manipulated content in its offences regarding the distribution of intimate images. The ACT and Queensland also include deepfakes in their definitions of non-consensual intimate images. In the Northern Territory, AI-generated content is not explicitly included in the definition of non-consensual sharing of intimate content.  

In Victoria and Western Australia, there is a separate offence consisting of creating AI-generated intimate images of a person without their consent.

Conclusion

If passed, the NSW Bill would significantly expand legal protections against AI-enabled sexual abuse within the state, including deepfake material in offences involving the possession and distribution of intimate images, in both public and private settings. This would bring NSW law into line with the majority of Australian jurisdictions, which have legislated to include deepfakes in their criminal laws against the distribution of intimate material without consent.

If you require legal advice or representation in any legal matter, please contact Go To Court Lawyers.