Canada Has a New Regulation to Cease Deepfake Nudes. Will It Work?
Penalties underneath Invoice C-16, coming into impact this month, embody as much as 10 years in jail
ILLUSTRATION BY VARTIKA SHARMA
Printed 6:30, JULY 8, 2026
“My boyfriend was his greatest pal. I felt actually betrayed and dehumanized,” Lucy says.
When younger individuals come throughout non-consensual AI-generated content material depicting them, they could not contact a lawyer or the police. As a substitute, they typically flip to the web, looking for recommendation. For Lucy, that search began on Reddit. As the unique image used within the AI picture was from when she was seventeen, she reasoned, it could possibly be thought-about baby intercourse abuse materials (also called CSAM). This might presumably make it a legal act. However the picture was nonetheless “faux.” The nude physique in it, though connected to an actual picture of her face, was not explicitly hers. It wasn’t clear to her whether or not Bobby’s creation and possession of such a picture could be thought-about a criminal offense.
Lucy then moved on to on-line authorized websites, shopping different boards for solutions. And whereas she didn’t discover any outright “Sure, that is unlawful” or “No, it’s not,” she did uncover posts from different younger ladies additionally searching for options. “I noticed a pair [posts] the place this occurred the place their boyfriend would do that to them. Generally their brother’s pal. I used to be like, Okay, I’m not going insane. That is the true method [I’m] feeling.”
The posts Lucy noticed appeared to disclose a sample. The photographs are sometimes created by somebody throughout the sufferer’s social circle and are tied to dynamics of management, energy, and humiliation, quite than simply sexual need.
In line with an announcement from the Canadian Safety Intelligence Service, “over 90 p.c of deepfakes accessible on-line are non-consensual pornographic clips of girls.” As of October 2022, there have been over 57 million Google search outcomes for “deepfake porn” globally. A 2024 report from the United Nations shined an particularly harsh gentle on Canadians’ use of generative AI. A survey of legislation enforcement throughout Canada, the UK, Portugal, and Nigeria discovered that Canada is seeing the widest vary and highest quantity of AI-generated CSAM.
To fight this scourge, the federal authorities final December got down to make vital amendments to the Felony Code. It launched Invoice C-16, the Defending Victims Act, which, amongst different provisions, aimed to make the distribution of such pictures a punishable offence. The murky authorized panorama that Lucy navigated is now poised to alter, with the invoice—which carries a most penalty of as much as ten years in jail—having acquired royal assent in June and coming into drive this month.
I think about information of the brand new legislation would come as reduction to the numerous Canadians affected by sexual deepfakes. Once I started reporting this story late final 12 months, I discovered innumerable social media posts from ladies who had been determined for a authorized recourse.
On a Reddit discussion board, r/LegalAdviceCanada, a person named Andie wrote that somebody despatched her an AI-generated picture of her bare: “The man that despatched it to me stated he discovered it on Reddit. However, I’m fairly certain he made it and I’m hoping it’s not been posted on-line. . . . After telling him I used to be going to the authorities he blocked me. I don’t know if this might be thought-about revenge porn? Or if that is even unlawful at this level? Nevertheless it feels unhealthy.”
Responses poured in, with two customers suggesting Andie pursue authorized motion. Others cited the anomaly of the Felony Code. After some analysis of her personal, Andie responded that she was not conscious of any authorized precedent in her scenario: “I’ve contacted my native police division and have but to listen to again.” One other stranger stated: “For this reason our grade faculty lecturers had been so desperate to warn us about posting pictures on-line.”
As of this writing, Andie has but to share an replace on her scenario (she didn’t reply to requests for an interview). It’s unclear if she ever took the case to courtroom.
Key to the entire situation is how simply these sensible pictures at the moment are being created with the assistance of AI. Nudifying apps like DeepNude use the expertise to investigate a photograph—physique form, pose, lighting—and generate a man-made nude picture that’s blended with the topic’s actual face. The result’s one thing that seems shockingly genuine however isn’t {a photograph} of the particular person’s precise physique. This created extreme issues in courtroom within the absence of a contemporary legislation that mirrored present realities: when a picture wasn’t wholly a “actual picture,” it grew to become tougher to prosecute underneath provisions that hinged on whether or not it depicted an individual’s precise physique.
Robert Diab, a professor within the School of Regulation at Thompson Rivers College, in Kamloops, British Columbia, has mirrored on this gray zone in his writing. Whereas CSAM legal guidelines might apply when minors had been depicted, protections for adults had been much less clear. Legal guidelines governing non-consensual intimate pictures had been written with actual images in thoughts and wouldn’t lengthen to AI-generated deepfakes.
When Diab and I spoke in December, it was simply eight days after the minister of justice and lawyer basic of Canada, Sean Fraser, introduced the introduction of Invoice C-16. One of many amendments, Diab stated, would make creating and distributing deepfakes “clearly legal.” The brand new amendments to the Felony Code add the phrase “made by any digital or mechanical means” in terms of a visible illustration, together with “if the depiction is prone to be mistaken for a visible recording of that particular person.”
The language is rock strong, based on Diab. Technological terminology is continually evolving. What is named a “deepfake” as we speak could have a totally completely different title in ten years. By utilizing the broad however concise time period “digital or mechanical means, it will clearly seize that type of conduct,” he stated.
Natasha Dixon, govt director of the Digital Sexual Violence Assist Centre, who relies in Toronto, factors to a unique complication that may possible persist even as soon as deepfakes are criminalized in Canada. A deepfake posted publicly on social media from nameless accounts doesn’t inform you who produced it, making it tougher to go after culprits at the same time as the ladies depicted within the pictures face actual harm.
One case introduced earlier than Justice Brian G. Puddington in October of 2025 revealed the constraints that even a well-meaning justice system confronted. A person recognized as R. Ok. 1 was charged after allegedly sending two pictures of his spouse in a state of undress with out her consent to an unnamed man: certainly one of her in a bra and one which had been digitally manipulated to position her head onto a nude physique. R. Ok., the spouse, argued that the non-consensual distribution of those pictures was a violation of part 162.1(1) of the Felony Code. However the choose dominated that the pictures didn’t meet the definition of “intimate picture.”
With regard to the digitally altered picture, Justice Puddington wrote that “it’s not her nude physique and it’s not her breasts—each of that are crucial to fulfill that definition,” the courtroom doc reads. “On condition that the picture in query is clearly not a photograph of R. Ok.’s nude physique, or her breasts, the picture doesn’t fall throughout the definition of intimate picture.”
In his conclusion, the choose wrote he was sympathetic to R. Ok., as she needed to endure viewing and describing the pictures in a courtroom full of individuals, and likewise because the pictures could have made their method into the general public area. However “I need to apply the legislation dispassionately, and never attempt to shoehorn pictures right into a definition just because I discover the images deplorable.”
It was removed from the primary time that the legislation had failed somebody looking for assist after having non-consensual intimate pictures made from them. In 2024, a journalist on the Toronto Star broke the story of a highschool boy who had used AI to make nude pictures of teenage women he knew. Toronto police reportedly instructed the women that, because the boy didn’t distribute the pictures, the case would fall underneath Canada’s private-use exception, which permits somebody to own—with out being criminally liable—sexual materials involving minors in very restricted non-public circumstances.
Suzie Dunn, an assistant professor at Dalhousie College’s Schulich Faculty of Regulation (and likewise a member of The Walrus’s Academic Overview Committee), instructed the Toronto Star on the time that the exception as it’d apply to deepfakes had by no means been examined in courtroom. Once I spoke to her, she remained hesitant about whether or not it holds up legally. “While you’re utilizing a generative AI program, you’re participating in a extra shared course of. And whenever you interact in a shared course of, the private-use exception now not applies,” she stated.
With expertise evolving quickly, new instances have continued to emerge thick and quick. In Might, following a multi-jurisdictional investigation, Ottawa police laid fees towards a person from Ontario and one from Nova Scotia who allegedly AI-generated intimate pictures depicting as much as twenty-five victims. That was solely two months after one other Nova Scotia man accused of making deepfakes of his highschool classmates was acquitted on related fees. As for younger ladies who come ahead and are sometimes instructed what’s occurred to them will not be unlawful, Dunn says, “I feel that’s a very disappointing expertise for lots of people who’ve been harmed on this method.”
Bunwell C-16 received’t alter the end result of previous instances. Whereas the adjustments it brings will likely be too little, too late for some, others hope it’s going to handle among the authorized gaps which have enabled the menace of sexual deepfakes. And it’s a menace that’s quick gotten out of hand in recent times.
Alexios Mantzarlis, the director of the Safety, Belief, and Security Initiative at Cornell Tech—an training hub centered on bettering cybersecurity and privateness—suggests in a 2025 article for Indicator that the viewers for nudify instruments is increasing quickly. He reported that, final October, the app ClothOff drew practically 2 million visits in only one month, greater than double its common visitors earlier that 12 months. In his article, Mantzarlis writes that ten of the highest AI nudifying web sites his staff tracks acquired greater than 10 million visits that month, a 4 p.c improve from half a 12 months earlier. Earlier than it shut down in Might 2025 shortly after being contacted by a gaggle of publications, together with the CBC’s investigative unit, MrDeepFakes was house to tens of hundreds of non-consensually made deepfake movies, some extraordinarily violent in nature. It’s reported the positioning had acquired over 18 million visits in March 2025 alone.
In line with Mantzarlis’s article, the expertise is now not confined to fringe corners of the web; it’s being marketed and built-in immediately into mainstream platforms. Between September and December 2025, Meta reportedly ran greater than 9,000 advertisements for nudifying apps throughout Fb and Instagram, bringing the whole variety of such advertisements on its platforms that 12 months to over 25,000. And over the previous two years, Grok, the AI chatbot embedded in Elon Musk–owned X, has gained image- and video-editing capabilities.
The dangers of that enlargement grew to become obvious shortly: an investigation by the Middle for Countering Digital Hate discovered that in simply the eleven days from December 29, 2025, to January 8, 2026, Grok generated an estimated 3 million sexualized pictures, together with 23,000 depicting youngsters. It wasn’t till January 14, after criticism from lawmakers from internationally, that restrictions to X customers’ entry to Grok’s image-editing companies had been applied. What’s extra, whereas Canada’s new authorized provisions criminalize people sharing non-consensual AI-generated deepfakes, the businesses that develop, host, or promote the instruments used to create the pictures are past the legislation’s scope.
On the similar time, the nudifying platforms have an enormous attain, and their victims typically additionally embody public personalities. Take Sarah Z, who runs a YouTube channel with over half 1,000,000 subscribers. She started receiving messages on her Tumblr and Instagram in 2025, warning that deepfake movies of her in sexually compromising positions had been circulating on-line. “When these pictures are posted anonymously, you actually know nothing in regards to the particular person on the opposite aspect,” she stated. “Are they in my metropolis? Or are they in a totally completely different nation or continent?”
Yao Zhang, a forty-year-old activist based mostly in Quebec, is initially from China. She is a commentator on YouTube and an open critic of the Chinese language Communist Celebration. Across the autumn of 2024, AI-generated topless pictures depicting her started to flow into on-line. She noticed them totally on X, the place they had been noticed even in replies to posts from then prime minister Justin Trudeau and the official Authorities of Canada account.
Her first order of enterprise was to go to her on-line group. On September 19, she created a YouTube video and posted it for her roughly 180,000 subscribers. “I simply publicly confirmed individuals, okay, that is faux. That’s not me. And I imagine that is the Chinese language authorities doing this. And if you wish to scare me or humiliate me on this method, it received’t achieve success,” she instructed me.
Following this on-line bombardment, World Affairs Canada issued an official assertion warning Canadians of a China-linked “spamouflage” marketing campaign, with AI-generated deepfakes within the a whole bunch being posted each day to intimidate critics. “I feel if the Canadian authorities didn’t push X, I don’t assume X would [delete] it so quick,” Zhang stated.
To raised perceive the charges of reported instances till Invoice C-16 was handed, I approached police departments in Canada’s main cities. The Vancouver police stated the seek for the requested data would take eighty hours over 5 to 6 months, whereas the Montreal police stated outright they might not present the information as there was no particular crime code for AI-generated pornography, that means the knowledge would must be compiled manually.
The responses pointed to the extreme underreporting of deepfake pornographic pictures in Canada thus far. “The analysis that we’ve performed [shows] most individuals aren’t going to go to the police,” stated Dunn. “Most individuals will not be going to go to a lawyer. They’re going to inform their mother.” It stays to be seen how the brand new stricter penalties change this situation.
Greater than a 12 months later, now nineteen-year-old Lucy nonetheless thinks in regards to the picture. “It appears like a very unclosed chapter of my life,” she stated. The fallout was troublesome for her. She and Bobby shared courses. Friends at her faculty made gentle of the scenario. Some urged her to forgive him. Then Bobby stopped going to highschool. And shortly it was June. Her pal group graduated, and a few moved away.
Lucy, Sarah, and Zhang every instructed me very completely different tales related by the identical underlying theme. The legislation is simply beginning to catch as much as their on a regular basis actuality. And till it does, although the disgrace doesn’t belong to them, the methods that allowed this abuse to proliferate make it simple to really feel in any other case.
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