Deepfake Digital Harm & Exploitation Bill – coalition submission

Posted: August 5, 2026Category:

Deepfake Digital Harm & Exploitation Bill – coalition submission

This is a submission from the Coalition for the Safety of Women & Children, which Auckland Women’s Centre chairs, submitted on 19 June 2026

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Thank you for the opportunity to make a submission on this Bill.

The Coalition for the Safety of Women and Children supports the Deepfake Digital Harm and Exploitation Bill.

Deepfake sexual abuse causes significant harm to victim-survivors and disproportionately targets women. The Bill addresses an important gap in New Zealand’s legal framework, particularly where existing provisions concerning intimate visual recordings do not adequately capture fabricated sexual images. The Coalition recommends strengthening the Bill by focusing on consent rather than knowledge, improving the identification test for victims, addressing threats involving intimate images, and considering broader regulation of technologies that facilitate image-based sexual abuse.

Our position

The Coalition supports the Bill and welcomes its intent to address the growing problem of non-consensual sexual deepfakes, digitally created sexual exploitation, and image-based sexual abuse. We agree that the Crimes Act 1961 section 216G needs to be amended as stated in the Deepfake Digital Harm and Exploitation Bill, as does the Harmful Digital Communication Act section 4, to address the definition of intimate visual recording. This Bill joins international recognition of the considerable harm of deepfake sexual and pornographic imaging now understood to be image-based sexual abuse.1

The Coalition has a particular interest in the Bill’s implications for stalking and technology-facilitated abuse. Deepfake images – and sometimes just the threat of them – can be used by stalkers as a tool of harm, intimidation, humiliation, coercion, and control. The Bill will therefore contribute to improving protection for stalking victim-survivors.

However, the issue of deepfake imaging points to wider problems with unregulated digital platforms and the failure of digital companies to address safety in the design of applications and other means of publication.2

This Bill is a positive first step to addressing online safety – but it is only a first step.

Background

Deepfake sexual abuse causes real and significant harm, reputational damage, fear and distress. This form of abuse is overwhelmingly directed at women, minority ethnic groups, the rainbow community, people with disabilities, and culturally and linguistically diverse communities.3

For victim-survivors, the harm is substantial regardless of whether the image is derived from a genuine photograph or is entirely fabricated. Victim-survivors subjected to deepfake sexual abuse commonly report humiliation, fear, anxiety, loss of control, reputational damage, and violation of their privacy and sexual autonomy.4 Rapid development of AI technology has made such fake images remarkably easy to create and to post on-line.

This Bill is necessary as existing laws do not cover deepfake images, such as those generated through AI or any other means. This means that, currently, there are few deterrents to generating or posting deepfake images, and few avenues for accountability. Moreover, it is extremely difficult to have such images removed from online circulation or platforms. The on-going existence of deepfake images posted on-line results in considerable fear or distress to victims.

Recommendations:

The current Bill

  1. The Coalition recommends that the proposed deepfake provision apply regardless of whether the subject of the recording knew about or consented to it, in line with how “intimate visual recording” is already defined under the HDCA.
  2. Reconsider the phrase ‘appears to show the person’. This phrase invites unnecessary arguments about realism, stylisation, and image quality. A better test would be whether a reasonable person would identify the subject of the image as the depicted individual, and whether that person’s likeness has been sexualised without their consent.
  3. Consider whether legislation currently recognises and addresses the harm of threatening deepfake sexual abuse even before there is an image; and insert additions to address this harm into this Bill if there are gaps. Threatening to expose an intimate image can cause immediate and profound emotional and psychological harm – and in the case of deepfakes, such a threat can be delivered even if the victim knows that no real intimate images can possibly exist. Threats of intimate image exposure are frequently used as tools of coercion, manipulation, blackmail, and control, and deepfakes make this a much more widely accessible threat.

Broader Legislative and Regulatory Context

The following recommendations fall outside the immediate scope of this Bill but are important to the wider online safety environment in which deepfake abuse occurs.

  1. Completely prohibit nudification applications and websites. Criminalisation alone is unlikely to prevent the widespread creation of sexualised deepfakes. The technologies involved are increasingly accessible, inexpensive, and easy to use. International jurisdictions including Australia, the United Kingdom, and the European Union are taking steps to restrict or prohibit these tools.
  2. Establish a regulatory framework for high-risk artificial intelligence systems, particularly technologies capable of generating non-consensual sexual content. This could include mandatory safety guardrails, transparency requirements, and stronger obligations on distributors and platforms.
  3. Review and modernise New Zealand’s online safety legislation, including the Classification Act 1993 and the Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015.
  4. Regulate online platforms and other forms of media bringing them into one cohesive framework with consistent safety standards. New Zealand should insist on safety by design for all publishers of on-line digital information.
  5. Establish an independent national online safety regulator.
  6. Invest in public online safety education and prevention initiatives.
  7. Support New Zealand-based research into online harms and technology-facilitated abuse.

Conclusion

The Coalition supports the Deepfake Digital Harm and Exploitation Bill and considers it an important step towards addressing image-based sexual abuse. The Select Committee has an opportunity to strengthen legislation for victim-survivors by ensuring the Bill’s wording regarding depictions is clear, and considering whether the Bill can include any changes to legislation necessary to adequately captures deepfake threats. Parliament as a whole must consider how New Zealand’s legislation can be made fit-for-purpose to respond to the rapidly evolving technological environment in which these harms occur, for the safety of women and all communities.

About the Coalition for the Safety of Women and Children

The Auckland Coalition for the Safety of Women and Children was formed in 2006 and brings together organisations and advocates committed to ending gender-based violence against women, children, and people of diverse gender and sexual identities. Acknowledging Te Tiriti o Waitangi and grounded in an intersectional understanding of violence, the Coalition recognises that wāhine Māori, Pacific peoples, disabled people, takatāpui, trans and gender-diverse people, and migrant and refugee communities face disproportionate harm from sexual violence and family violence. Through strengthening laws and policy, building cross-sector networks, and raising public awareness, the Coalition works alongside the National Collective of Women’s Refuges and the National Council of Women to advance safety, dignity, and wellbeing. We were leading advocates of stalking criminalisation in New Zealand and continue to monitor the implementation of the new stalking legislation.

Coalition members include: Aotearoa Women’s Watch, Auckland Women’s Centre – Te Wāhi Wāhine o Tāmaki Makaurau, Dr Alison Towns, Domestic Violence Expert and Researcher, Eastern Women’s Refuge, Good Shepherd, HELP Support for Sexual Abuse Survivors, Hestia Women’s Refuge, Hohou Te Rongo Kahukura – Outing Violence, Inner City Women’s Group, Kia Haumaru – Personal Safety Education, National Council of Women Auckland, North Shore Family Violence Prevention Coordinator, NZ Human Rights Centre, Rape Prevention Education – Whakatu Mauri, Respect, Rodney Women’s Centre, Shakti Community Council NZ, SHINE Safer Homes in NZ Everyday, Te Ārai Roa Manaaki – Living Without Violence Waiheke, The Backbone Collective, Women’s Health Action Trust, Women’s Refuge – Tāmaki Makaurau, YWCA Auckland. Coalition for the Safety of Women and Children

Reference notes:

1 Flynn, A., Powell, A., Eaton, A., & Scott, A. J. (2025). Sexualized Deepfake Abuse: Perpetrator and Victim Perspectives on the Motivations and Forms of Non-Consensually Created and Shared Sexualized Deepfake Imagery. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 0(0). Available at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/08862605251368834

Okolie, Chidera (2023) “Artificial Intelligence-Altered Videos (Deepfakes), Image-Based Sexual Abuse, and Data Privacy Concerns,” Journal of International Women’s Studies: Vol. 25: Iss. 2, Article 11. Available at: https://vc.bridgew.edu/jiws/vol25/iss2/11 .

2 Flynn et al. (2025). Above.

3 Flynn et al. (2025). Above.

4 https://www.1news.co.nz/2026/05/22/man-sentenced-for-creating-sharing-deepfake-porn-images/ .