Australian government announces new online safety laws targeting sextortion and deepfake abuse

The Australian government has unveiled legislation that would impose new criminal penalties for sextortion and the creation or distribution of deepfake sexual imagery depicting minors, with maximum sentences of up to 15 years in prison. The bill also requires social-media platforms to implement measures to prevent the upload and sharing of such material, and grants the eSafety Commissioner expanded enforcement powers including the ability to issue take-down notices and levy fines of up to 10 per cent of a company's annual turnover for non-compliance. The move follows a government inquiry that found a substantial increase in reports of AI-generated child sexual abuse material over the past 18 months.

Where criminal penalties address the supply side and platform obligations set a floor for removal, detection systems that operate at the point of contact address the moment harm begins. Guardii's anti-CSAM module, which includes recognition of AI-generated and deepfake imagery, works in the direct-message layer where solicitation and distribution most often occur, blocking hostile material before it reaches a child and alerting the appropriate authority when content crosses the threshold for mandatory reporting. As an AI-driven platform already deployed across Instagram, Snapchat, Discord and Roblox, Guardii closes the operational gap between a legal requirement to prevent harm and the technical capability to do so, enabling platforms to meet their duty of care through pattern-based detection rather than relying solely on after-the-fact reporting and takedown.