A campaigner against image-based abuse has welcomed the Albanese government's plan to criminalise non-consensual "deep fake" pornographic content, but warns the new laws will be challenging to enforce across borders.
Noelle Martin, a victim-survivor, lawyer and 2019 Young Australian of the Year finalist, said she hoped the reforms would "serve a really strong educative and deterrence function" but that "stopping the scourge" of deepfakes would require significant investment in enforcement.
"There are major difficulties with enforcement and with identifying who's responsible and holding perpetrators to account," she said.
"Holding perpetrators to account is going to be the key if we're going to actually effectively tackle this - because it is a borderless and global issue."
Police need to be well-resourced and trained, and would need to work across jurisdictions, she said.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced after Wednesday's national cabinet meeting that Attorney General Mark Dreyfus will develop legislation to ban non-consensual deepfake pornography.
"Sharing [non-consensual] sexually explicit material using technology like artificial intelligence will be subject to serious criminal penalties," Mr Albanese said. The announcement follows a similar move last month in the United Kingdom.
"The government will also bring forward legislation in early August to outlaw the release of private information online with an intent to cause harm. This is known as doxxing," he said.
Ms Martin, 29, was 18 years old when she did a reverse image search of herself online and discovered that a selfie she had posted a year earlier had been edited onto pornographic images and distributed across porn sites.
During her years of advocacy, she has been repeatedly targeted for abuse online.
Addressing the media in Sydney after the specially convened meeting with his state and territory counterparts to discuss the national crisis of violence against women, Mr Albanese also said the upcoming federal budget would including funding for a pilot of digital age assurance technology.
Communications Minister Michelle Rowland was pursuing "long overdue" classification reforms with states and territories, "which will examine options to reduce exposure to violent pornography, informed by engagement with experts and best available evidence about harms", he said.
Ms Martin, who first shared her story publicly in 2015, has spent years advocating for laws to protect women from digital abuse. Her Change.org petition calling on the federal government to criminalise image-based abuse received more than 44,000 signatures in 2017.
Canberra author of Troll Hunting, cyberhate expert and editor of Broad Agenda Ginger Gorman welcomed the government's focus on addressing violence against women, but said "we need to be careful that any new reforms aren't too specific".
"Humans are creative and can find infinite ways to harm each other online," Ms Gorman said.
"If you ban one mechanism, another one pops up. We therefore need laws that are able to capture current tools for spreading extremist misogyny and harming women, as well as future - not yet created - mechanisms."
She said the government could consider treating all digital platforms as publishers, and enforce community expectations and values via a legislated duty of care to users.
Ms Gorman said online content could lead to real-life harm. "We saw this with recent research showing Andrew Tate's ideology is driving sexual harassment, sexism and misogyny in Australian classrooms," she said.
RMIT Professor Nicola Henry, who researches image-based abuse, said it was important to strengthen civil law remedies - such as under defamation and copyright laws, as well as through the eSafety commissioner - to help victim-survivors who may be reluctant to engage with the criminal courts, and warned that some young people may breach the law without malice.
The government has brought forward a review of the Online Safety Act to report this year.
Mr Albanese also announced the government would invest $925 million over five years to make permanent the Leaving Violence Program, which enables victim-survivors to access up to $5000 worth of financial support to escape from violent intimate partners.
Along with cash payments of up to $1500 and contributions to expenses, eligible victim-survivors will be supported with "referral services, risk assessments and safety planning," Mr Albanese said.
Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Commissioner Micaela Cronin urged leaders not to "set and forget" plans to address gender-based violence, and to maintain their focus on ending domestic and family violence.
"We have a national plan which is a very good national plan, but no plan in such a complex area can be a set and forget plan, we need to be constantly looking at what is emerging and changing," she said.
Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said next month's federal budget would include $6.5 million for a pilot of age-assurance technologies for children online.
The funding will go towards identifying available age verification technologies and assessing their efficacy. The eSafety Commission has previously identified that this technology could be used to prevent and mitigate harms to children from online pornography.
Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth said the government had evaluated and redesigned the $5000 Escaping Violence Payment pilot program introduced by the Coalition in 2021. The revamped version of the scheme will launch in mid-2025.
