This page is about a bill. That means that it's not the law yet, but some people want it to be the law. It could change quickly, and some of the information is just a draft.

Deepfake Digital Harm and Exploitation Bill

Introduction

You could also call this:

"Protecting You from Harmful Fake Images and Videos"

Illustration for Deepfake Digital Harm and Exploitation Bill

You will have new laws to protect you from harmful deepfakes. Deepfakes are fake images or videos that look like you, but are not real. They can be very hurtful and are a violation of your rights. You have the right to control your own image and what happens to it. If someone makes a deepfake of you without your consent, it is a violation of your rights. This can cause you harm and damage your reputation. The proposed law change will make it clearer that creating and sharing deepfakes without consent is against the law. It will update the Crimes Act 1961 and the Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015 to include deepfakes as a type of harmful content. This means that people who create and share deepfakes without consent can be held accountable for their actions.

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This page was last updated on 27 October 2025

View the original legislation for this page at https://legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1986/0120/latest/link.aspx?id=LMS1536413-general-policy-statement.

Topics:

Crime and justice > Criminal lawRights and equality > Anti-discriminationRights and equality > Privacy

Deepfake Digital Harm and Exploitation Bill, or

"Protecting People from Harmful Digital Images"

Clause by clause analysis, or

"Breaking down the law into smaller parts to understand what each section means"

General policy statement

Worldwide there has been a rise in the proliferation of sexually explicit deepfakes. This is where images or videos are digitally altered or synthesised to take an individual's recognisable likeness and turn it into sexually explicit material.

This form of material constitutes a clear violation of self-ownership and personal autonomy. Just as the unauthorised sharing of genuine intimate imagery is a rights infringement, so too is the false representation of a person in intimate contexts without consent. This conduct misappropriates a person's image for exploitative purposes, causing reputational, psychological, and often material harm. Criminalising such acts and enabling victims to seek redress and removal aligns with a commitment to defending individuals from coercion, fraud, and aggression.

This Bill holds accountable those who use digital tools to violate other individuals' agency. It does this by amending both the Crimes Act 1961 and the Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015 to expand the definition of an "intimate visual recording" to explicitly include images created, synthesised, or altered to show a person's likeness produced without consent.

This Bill is an omnibus Bill introduced under Standing Order 267(a).