New Zealand Law Commission recommends criminal penalties for deepfake intimate imagery of children

The New Zealand Law Commission published recommendations on 5 September 2026 for a new suite of criminal offences addressing intimate image abuse, including a standalone provision criminalizing the creation, possession and distribution of digitally manipulated or AI-generated sexual imagery depicting children. The Commission's report, delivered to the Minister of Justice, proposes penalties of up to 14 years' imprisonment for offenders who use deepfake or nudification technology to produce explicit depictions of identifiable minors, noting that current legislation does not adequately cover synthetic imagery where no photographic abuse occurred. The recommendations follow a two-year review during which submitters, including child-protection organizations and technology researchers, highlighted the increasing accessibility of generative AI tools and the severe psychological harm caused to young victims whose likenesses are weaponized without their knowledge or consent.

Criminal sanctions for the creation of deepfake child abuse imagery address culpability after the harm has occurred but do not prevent the initial act of production or the private circulation that typically precedes public discovery. Guardii's anti-CSAM detection technology, which operates in real time across direct-message environments on Instagram, Snapchat, Discord, Roblox and other platforms, identifies and blocks AI-generated and manipulated sexual imagery of children as it is first exchanged, surfacing the conversation to the appropriate authority before the content can be further distributed or cause prolonged psychological injury to the victim. This point-of-contact intervention complements the deterrent function of the Law Commission's proposed penalties by reducing the likelihood that such material will circulate undetected, and by preserving digital evidence at the earliest stage of an offense, enabling law enforcement to act on the new provisions the moment they come into force.