Question to the Attorney General:

To ask the Solicitor General, what steps her Department is taking to ensure the prosecution of people who use AI to create deepfake photos of girls.

The Government takes the use of artificial intelligence to generate child sexual abuse material (CSAM) extremely seriously. Offences involving AI-generated CSAM – including so-called ‘deepfakes’ – are an increasing concern for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) due to the realism of such images and the speed and scale at which they can be produced.

Creating, possessing, or distributing AI-generated CSAM is already a criminal offence. The Online Safety Act expands upon this by placing a duty on online platforms to proactively identify and remove this type of content. The CPS will prosecute individuals who commit these offences whenever the legal test is met.

The Attorney General’s Office and CPS are working closely with criminal justice partners to identify and address any legislative gaps. The Crime and Policing Bill will introduce a new offence to criminalise AI models that have been optimised to create CSAM. It will also expand existing legislation on ‘paedophile manuals’ to enable the prosecution of individuals who instruct others on how to use AI tools to generate CSAM.