18th of June 2024,
Victorian Legislative Council, Melbourne
RACHEL PAYNE (South-Eastern Metropolitan) — To ask the Attorney-General
I also have a question for the Attorney-General. In Victoria, in Australia and all over the world the rise of AI has resulted in numerous cases of it being used to generate explicit imagery of people without their consent. Victoria has thankfully been proactive in this space. The Justice Legislation Amendment (Sexual Offences and Other Matters) Act 2022 updated image-based sexual offences to capture non-consensual artificially generated, manipulated or altered images. In light of recent events and the increased use and complexity of AI, it is understandable that people are concerned about whether we have done enough. So my question is: does the law in Victoria adequately respond to the present and future risks that AI presents for the non-consensual generation of explicit imagery?
Verbal Response from Attorney-General, Jaclyn Symes:
I thank Ms Payne for her question. You raise a really important matter, and I will take you up on the last part of your question, which talked about are we prepared for the future. It is a really evolving space, and I guess the answer is no, because we do not exactly know where it is all going to go. But we are aware of the risks, we are aware of the concerns, and as you have indicated, we have taken steps in our legislative approach to respond to the emerging incidents of deepfake porn and the like. We will continue to monitor the legislative framework and make sure that it is continually updated to respond to emerging concerns. I can assure you in this space that it is on a SCAG agenda and it is something that we are regularly talking about in talking to other states, making sure that if other people have got ideas they are transferred across jurisdictions.
I would welcome continued feedback from all members of Parliament in relation to this, because it really is an issue that comes up time and time again and in new and different ways each and every week. I know that it is a concerning issue, and I think that laws are one way of responding to it, but there are also several programs, particularly in schools, in relation to education about sexting –Respectful Relationships and Love Bites programs and all of these efforts – to combat this activity and the harm that it can cause.
Supplementary Question (Rachel Payne):
I thank the Attorney for her response. By way of supplementary, some of the recent cases of non-consensual AI-generated explicit imagery have involved school-age children, both as victims and as perpetrators. This creates an intersection between image-based sexual offences and child exploitation material. So my supplementary is: what is the law in Victoria currently doing to respond to where these offences intersect?
Supplementary Response (Jaclyn Symes):
I thank Ms Payne for her question. There might be an opportunity for you and me to have a more broad conversation offline in relation to that matter, because they are separate offences and you can be charged with both. The interrelationship of them may be just that they are multiple offences applied. If you have got some specific examples, we can talk through that, but I think it is part of the broader conversation around making sure that we are trying to stay ahead of the curve and respond to the future. Obviously a lot of the offences committed over carriage services are federal remits, so those conversations are underway. But I am more than happy to have a more detailed conversation with you.
