Creating degrading deepfakes now a crime in SA
From 3 November 2025, South Australia has strengthened its criminal laws to tackle the misuse of artificial intelligence and digital technology to create offensive deepfake content. These reforms make it a criminal offence to generate or distribute humiliating, degrading, invasive or sexually explicit deepfake images or videos without consent — even when the content is created entirely using AI.
This change is part of a broader effort by the South Australian Government to ensure the law keeps pace with rapidly advancing digital technology and to protect people from serious online harm.
What Is Now Against the Law?
Under the updated rules now in effect:
It is an offence to create or share AI-generated images, videos or audio that are humiliating, degrading or invasive and appear to depict a real person without their consent.
These laws apply even where no original image or video was manipulated — meaning entirely AI-generated deepfakes are covered.
Offenders may face a fine of up to $20,000, up to four years’ imprisonment, or both.
Courts can also order the surrender of equipment and records used to create the offending material.
Why These Laws Matter
AI tools that generate deepfakes have become widely available, making it easier than ever to produce deceptive, harmful content that appears real. Estimates suggest that up to 90–95 % of deepfakes online are non-consensual pornography, and women and girls are overwhelmingly the victims.
Left unchecked, deepfakes can:
Inflict serious psychological, reputational and emotional harm
Be used to harass, humiliate or intimidate individuals
Facilitate online blackmail and extortion
Damage careers, relationships and community standing
By criminalising creation and distribution of degrading deepfakes, South Australia is closing a gap in the law that previously treated only manipulated images differently from AI-created content.
What This Means for Individuals and Organisations
If you create, share or threaten to distribute deepfake content that depicts someone without their consent — and that content is degrading, humiliating, invasive or sexually explicit — you could be charged under the new laws.
This applies whether the content was:
Shared online or verbally threatened to be shared
Made with or without any original image or footage
Distributed via social media, messaging apps, forums, or other platforms
Even if a poster did not personally create the deepfake, sharing it knowing it’s degrading or invasive could expose them to legal risk.
This OYBlog was created with AI assistance based on the following source:
Laws criminalising the creation of degrading, humiliating deepfakes come into effect, Attorney General's Department, Inside State Government