Image: Priscilla de Preez/Unsplash/Reproduction
In December, the UK Parliament will vote on a bill to make deepfake pornography and downblousing illegal. If the measure is approved which is a high probability anyone creating or sharing content of this nature could be arrested.
Deepfake pornography is explicit images or videos manipulated to look like someone else without their consent.
This is a practice that has become more common with artificial intelligence programs that manage to superimpose a person’s face onto other bodies in such a subtle way that it’s difficult to tell if the image is true or false.
Deepfake images don’t just appear in pornography: in 2021, a Russian communications company released a commercial starring none other than Bruce Willis only fake. In October, Elon Musk appeared to be starring in a similar marketing campaign.
Downblousing photos, on the other hand, are explicit images taken without consent by hidden cameras or clandestine photos — that is, clandestinely, clandestinely taken.
The UK is at the forefront of criminalizing acts that offend the honor and reputation online, particularly of women. In 2019, Wales passed legislation making upskirt voyeurism images taken from the bottom up to photograph a woman’s genitals and buttocks a crime.
Still, the law has left loopholes, and that’s why parliamentarians are including new offences. Speaker of the House of Commons Penny Mordaunt told UK newspaper The Guardian that the online safety bill is due to be voted on as early as December.
not everyone wants
The proposal had stalled since Boris Johnson resigned in July. Now, civil society groups are divided over the project. On the one hand, child protection advocates and women classify the law as a “relief”.
“We’ve seen that the online threats people, especially children, face aren’t going away,” said Susie Hargreaves, executive director of the Internet Watch Foundation. “We know that strong and clear action is needed if the UK is to meet its goal of being the safest place in the world to go online.”
On the other hand, groups are calling for the project to be halted. The Open Rights Group claims the proposal threatens freedom of expression and is an attack on the encryption of private messages.
At least 70 organizations and experts signed an open letter to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak expressing concern that the law could become an attack on online safety.
“This will create a culture of everyday censorship that will disproportionately remove content from vulnerable, disadvantaged and minority communities that purport to protect it. That has to be completely rethought,” argues the group.
Sunak remains “lukewarm” in the discussion, but has already announced that it will adjust the project. However, he did not reveal what that will be.