Non-consensual AI porn doesn’t violate privacy – but it’s still wrong

https://theconversation.com/non-consensual-ai-porn-doesnt-violate-privacy-but-its-still-wrong-275095

Publish Date: 2026-02-12 14:08:00

It rarely takes long before new media technologies are turned to the task of creating pornography. This was true of the printing press, photography, and the earliest days of the internet. It’s also true of generative artificial intelligence (AI).

Face-swapping tech has been around for more than a decade. It almost immediately gave rise to “deepfakes” – fake, yet convincing images and videos of people.

Generative AI has supercharged the spread of deepfake pornography, making it easier than ever to fabricate explicit pictures and videos of others.

And it’s not just celebrities who are victimised. Deepfake nudes of classmates and teachers are rife in schools around the world, sometimes targeting children as young as 11. Image-based abuse is widespread, and victims say the law doesn’t offer enough protection.

So what does the law say about this? And even when not illegal, is it ever ethical to use this technology for one’s private fantasies?

Deepfake pornography and the law

In 2024, Australia amended its criminal code to explicitly include AI-generated porn in the law against distributing sexual material of others without their consent. As a result, digitally manipulated sexual imagery of others now falls within the same legal category as genuine photographs or video footage.

There are gaps in this legislation. Most notably, the relevant offence prohibits transmitting such material via a carriage service (such as the internet). But there is no standalone offence for creating such material. Only sharing is explicitly prohibited.

There is some ambiguity here. Many AI tools used to create sexual imagery are online services. To use them, you send data to the service, which then sends sexual imagery back. It’s unclear whether this counts as “transmitting” sexual material in the relevant legal sense.

Also, the offence requires that the person distributing the sexual material is either aware the target did not consent to its…

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