Last Tuesday in the House of Lords several people contributed discussions that was initially organised by the Conservative member Charlotte Owen who was fitted into the House of Lords last July and she is currently only a 30 year old person. She opened the session with the comment “To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they plan to prohibit “nudify” apps which create intimate images of other people using artificial intelligence without their consent.” and the Government Minister who responded was Jonathan Berry who is the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. After he responded to this text Charlotte did ask another question and then several other peoples contributed and then Steve Bassam commented and then a few more people before at the end the Archbishop of York who is Stephen Cottrell contributed. So here is the initial response from Jonathan to Charlotte and then the questions and responses from Steve Bassam and Stephen Cottrell. Here is the source of the whole discussion.

Jonathan Berry to Charlotte: My Lords, the Online Safety Act introduced new offences which criminalised the sharing of, or threatening to share, intimate images, including deepfakes, without consent. Where individuals create these images using any kind of technology and share or threaten to share them online, they may be committing an offence. The Act will additionally give online platforms new duties to tackle this content by removing it, including where it has been created via AI apps.

Steve Bassam: My Lords, the Government have been far too complacent on this issue. During the passage of the then Online Safety Bill, we warned a number of times that, given that this is a fast-moving technology, as the Minister says, the Government needed to get ahead of the game. Given the proliferation of these ghastly images and the appalling impact this has on people’s lives, does the Minister now agree that neither the emergence of these apps nor their misuse is surprising? If that is the case, why did the Government not broaden the scope of their amendments when they had the opportunity to do so? Will the Minister now look for ways in which we can plug the gaps that are clearly emerging?

Jonathan Berry: As the noble Lord said, it is a fast-moving space, and that requires an adaptive, agile response in legislating for it. That is the approach that we are taking. As to the argument that we can now see that it is not working, I am not sure that that is the case. The intimate image abuse offences commenced on 31 January—two weeks ago. I am pleased to see that, yesterday, we had our first cyberflashing conviction under those provisions. Using an evidence base, looking forward, we will have to consider carefully what is working before we go ahead and implement further bans.

Stephen Cottrell: My Lords, it would be very helpful if the Minister could explain. If I heard him correctly, he said that sharing has a six month ban but for malicious sharing it could be up to two years. Could he explain what non-malicious use would be?c

Jonathan Berry: There is a base offence in the law of sharing intimate images without consent or the reasonable belief of consent. That can extend to two years if the intent is to cause alarm, distress or humiliation, or if the purpose is to gain sexual gratification. Crucially, there is an offence of threatening to share these materials which also carries a two-year penalty.