Sam Rae (Hawke, Australian Labor Party) | Hansard source

The Criminal Code Amendment (Deepfake Sexual Material) Bill 2024 is sorely needed in our community. This bill seeks to address some of the most troubling and serious matters that are facing people all across our community and particularly impacting young people. Without canvassing the specifics, my community has been very, very seriously affected by some terrible cases around the production and distribution of artificial intelligence generated deepfake material of a sexual nature. This bill specifically provides a legal framework that recognises this risk to people in our community. Indeed, it creates an appropriate set of penalties for those who seek to attack others using this vile material.

There are provisions under existing legislation to protect children from this sort of vile behaviour, but, up until this point, legislation has not kept pace with the development of technology and the rise of AI as a tool by which to produce and distribute this very troubling material. Fundamentally, at its heart is the very unfortunate reality that troubled and unscrupulous people across the community are taking advantage of artificial intelligence and other tools of technology to dishonestly and now illegally produce material that is specifically designed to denigrate and humiliate other people across our community. While it can be used against any member of the community, it is most often used against girls and young women. I think that everybody in this House can agree that in this day and age we want to ensure that women in our community aren't adversely impacted by this very unreasonable and very cruel use of technology in order to misrepresent them and their actions—to use or take advantage of them in the pursuit of terrible and abusive behaviour. As I said, this is sometimes for the purposes of denigrating and humiliating, and sometimes is for much more insidious purposes.

The reality is that the bill will create a new criminal offence framework that will ban the sharing of this non-consensual deepfake pornography. For those who aren't aware, this is essentially the use of artificial intelligence and other technological tools to manipulate existing photographs, or perhaps to generate new photographs or material that appears to be photographs of real people by using source material. But those photographs themselves are entirely fake; they aren't real, and they generally depict the victim in some form of compromising position of a sexual nature—nudity or an inappropriate matter. Of course, the victims of this material have in no way given their consent for that to be the case.

Unfortunately, with the rise of that technology we've seen the prevalence of these crimes, of this type of denigrating behaviour increasing, and that is of immense concern to all people across the community. These reforms make exceptionally clear that people who are engaging in the production and dissemination of this sexually explicit material without consent will be subject to very serious criminal penalties, including, for those who are found guilty, a maximum penalty of six years imprisonment for transmitting this sexual material without consent, and seven years imprisonment for what I term the 'aggravated' offences associated with it, where the person created the material themselves.

It should be made clear that this legislation goes to dealing with material depicting adults. There already exists a framework and a set of laws under the Criminal Code which deal with child abuse material separately. It must be noted that the sanctions with regard to that material are very serious as well, but they aren't the focus of this particular bill.

This bill deals with matters where a person transmits this material across the community by using a carriage service—perhaps a phone or over the internet. It deals with material where the person depicted appears to be 18 years or older and with material where the person is depicted in a sexual manner or pose or engaging in sexual activity, or indeed where someone's sexual organs are used in the depiction. And of course it deals with matters where consent isn't provided. These are really troubling matters for our community to talk about, because these offences are so awful. Their impact on people, particularly on young people and particularly on women in our community, is extraordinarily profound. There is absolutely no legitimate purpose for engaging in the generation of this deepfake pornographic material that depicts a non-consenting person in our community. We will be working really closely with the state and territory governments to implement these laws and to ensure they are appropriately supported through policing as well as the education that necessarily goes with emerging technologies. This will ensure that our community can, first and foremost, have an understanding of the risks associated with this technology and also the penalties that come against any individual or any group of people that engage in behaviour that is in contravention of this bill.

Just to be clear on a number of matters, the offences covered by this bill do not cover private communications between consenting adults. I think it's worth making that clear so that people across the broader community can understand that this is not a bill designed to impede upon the activities of consenting adults who are engaging in private matters. The government has no wish or interest to intervene in such activities or behaviour. It is not designed to curb what is essentially legal behaviour between consenting adults. This is specifically aimed at dealing with, as I said, the production and dissemination of material that depicts non-consenting adults.

As I said earlier, my community has specifically dealt with this challenge in a very confronting manner. There are very strong views across our community about how the government should be responding, how governments of all persuasions at all levels should be responding, to this emerging risk. I am very pleased to see our government, the Albanese Labor government, bring forward, in an efficient but considered manner, a bill that seeks to address this emerging threat to our community and create a legislative framework that will appropriately address it to protect our kids, protect women and, indeed, protect all of our community against this awful and insidious behaviour.

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