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A House of Commons committee has amended a proposed bill that would criminalize sexual deepfakes to ensure it covers “nearly nude” images.
The change to Bill C-16 comes after experts warned the original version of the bill would likely not incorporate many of the images created by Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot that proliferated on his X platform at the beginning of this year.
The original version of the bill would have criminalized the non-consensual sharing of images which show the subject nude, exposing their sexual organs or engaged in explicit sexual activity. The images created by Grok — such as edits to photos of women to depict them wearing see-through bikinis — may not meet that standard.
MPs on the justice committee voted in favour of amendments put forward by Conservative MP Andrew Lawton that would change the definition to include images where the person is nude or “nearly nude.”
Lawton said in the committee the amendment was based on both witness testimony the MPs heard and the experience of a friend of his.
“We are seeing with the advancement of technology these very sophisticated and in some cases quite traumatizing assaults taking place. It simply just ensures that a small technicality is not excluding something that I think this law intends to capture,” he said.
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Liberal MP Patricia Lattanzio, who is the parliamentary secretary to Justice Minister Sean Fraser, said the amendment “clarifies the scope of the offence, and it aligns with evolving case law and it responds to the needs of the victims.”
The amendment was carried despite the objections of Bloc Québécois MP Rhéal Fortin, who said “nearly nude” was not defined specifically enough.
Another amendment adds a specific reference to artificial intelligence software in the definition of “intimate image.”
Lawton said in the committee the idea was to make sure to the bill captures AI systems.
“We’re trying to ensure that we don’t end up having to come back to the drawing board because this fails to capture the technologies that we’re dealing with here,” he said in the committee.
NDP MP Leah Gazan had put forward an amendment to the same section of the bill, which was not adopted. It aimed to target images that depict women and children in not fully nude but sexualized or humiliating contexts, such transparent bathing suits or being covered in blood or bruises.
She said the images amount to acts of violence meant to humiliate.
“We cannot leave open loopholes in this legislation that perpetrators can exploit to evade justice,” Gazan said in the committee.
The MPs also voted in favour of an amendment put forward by Lawton aimed at increasing the maximum penalty in cases where the material depicts sexual assault, and an amendment that would impose a 48-hour deadline for images to be taken down.
Lawton said the 48-hour requirement would place responsibility on tech companies, though a departmental expert told MPs it was unclear whether the amendment would result in images being taken down more quickly or more slowly than is currently the case.
The committee wrapped up its clause-by-clause process, through which amendments to a bill are made, last week. The bill must make its way through the Senate before it becomes law.
Deepfakes are only one element of Bill C-16, which would also criminalize coercive control and restore all mandatory minimum imprisonment penalties found unconstitutional by the courts, among other measures.
It’s part of a trio of tougher-on-crime bills put forward by the Liberal government that would implement a long list of changes to the Criminal Code. The bills have yet to be passed by Parliament.
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