Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what steps the Government is taking to prevent the use of denudifying apps used to create pornographic deepfake images.

The Government made a manifesto commitment to ban the creation of sexually explicit deepfake images, as part of the government’s commitment to halve the prevalence of violence against women and girls (VAWG) within the decade.

We are bringing forward provisions in the Crime and Policing Bill to meet that commitment. This will make this behaviour criminal, so that perpetrators can be brought to justice.

The sharing of or threatening to share a deepfake intimate image without consent is already a criminal offence under the Online Safety Act and was designated as a priority offence in November 2024. Companies in scope of the Act’s illegal safety duties will be required to proactively tackle this type of content, preventing its proliferation online.