Online Harms: Intimate Images
Debate between Baroness Scott of Bybrook and Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
Education is absolutely key to this, which is why there is a new review into how we educate young people in the use of social media now and in the future, as things change. I am sorry that I did not get the second question but I will look in Hansard and write to the noble Lord.
Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford (Con) [V]
My Lords, I welcome the Minister’s answer to my noble friend Lord Vaizey on deepfakes, but the Sensity AI report has found that tech is being used by a publicly available bot on Telegram to produce deepfakes by apparently undressing photos of clothed women. More than 100,000 women have been targeted and had faked images of them shared publicly. Some of these images appear to be underage, suggesting that the bot is being used to generate and share paedophilic content. I welcome the progress on revenge porn and up-skirting, and I accept the Minister’s comment, but the fact is that the Law Commission review will not report until 2021. There is not yet a specific offence in this area and we risk the tech running ahead of the law and women suffering, so may I press the Minister to take action on this as a matter of urgency? In the meantime, thousands more women and girls will run the risk of finding faked nude images of them irrevocably shared far and wide, and this is unacceptable.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
On regulation, I quite agree with my noble friend. We intend to establish in law a new duty of care on companies to ensure that they have robust systems and processes in place to tackle illegal content of their services to keep their users, particularly children, safe.