Conservative MP Laura Farris and the Ministry of Justice have proposed a new amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill that will make creating sexually explicit deepfake pornography a criminal offence in the UK.
Farris, who is also the Minister for Victims and Safeguarding, exclusively spoke to Glamour this morning to announce the news. The news came after Glamour’s Consent Survey, in partnership with Refuge and Rape Crisis England & Wales, which found that 91 per cent of women think that deepfake technology poses a threat to the safety of women.
Before this new amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill, “there was no legal recourse against those who create deepface pornography of others without their consent,” Farris tells Glamour. “Under the Online Safety Act, only the distribution of sharing deep fake porn is criminalised.”
Farris told Glamour that she believes the amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill is an “important opportunity to deal with the creation of deep fake images”. She continues: “It’s not enough to say that ‘I just created it to use for my own gratification. If that gets shared, it can have a catastrophic effect on a person’s life.”
The new offence will be punishable with an unlimited fine and a criminal record; only if the image is then shared could the offender face prison time. While this amendment is seen as a significant step towards protecting women, we should question any laws that push more resources into our criminal justice system that specifically targets and criminalises marginalised groups and never fully addresses the root cause of the problem.
