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14 March 2025
Issue: 8108 / Categories: Legal News , Criminal , Artificial intelligence , Technology , Media , Abuse , Cybercrime
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NLJ this week: How deepfake tech is super-charging abuse

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The rise of deepfake videos, deepfake porn and unsolicited sexual images (cyberflashing) is an alarming and increasingly prevalent problem. In this week’s NLJ, Jenni Dempster KC and Maleeka Bokhari, Red Lion Chambers, look into this abuse, the harm it causes and the legal protections that exist, notably the Online Safety Act 2023.

What is the scope of existing protection, what are the defences, how tough are the sanctions, what legislative developments are underway and how will they work in practice? The problem is widespread. As the authors report, ‘an analysis of 14,678 deepfake online videos, highlighted that 96% of them were non-consensual intimate content and that 100% of examined content on the top five “deepfake” pornography websites targeted women’.

Dempster and Bokhari write: ‘This worrying trend cannot be allowed to exist in any democracy where the autonomy, dignity and voices of women are threatened because of malicious AI-generated content.’ 

MOVERS & SHAKERS

Arc Pensions Law—Matthew Swynnerton

Arc Pensions Law—Matthew Swynnerton

Chair of the Association of Pension Lawyers joins as partner

Ampa Group—Kamal Chauhan

Ampa Group—Kamal Chauhan

Group names Shakespeare Martineau partner head of Sheffield office

Blake Morgan—four promotions

Blake Morgan—four promotions

Four legal directors promoted to partner across UK offices

NEWS

The abolition of assured shorthold tenancies and section 21 evictions marks the beginning of a ‘brave new world’ for England’s rental sector, writes Daniel Bacon of Seddons GSC

Stephen Gold’s latest Civil Way column rounds up a flurry of procedural and regulatory changes reshaping housing, alternative dispute resolution (ADR) and personal injury litigation
Patients are being systematically failed by an NHS complaints regime that is opaque, poorly enforced and often stacked against them, argues Charles Davey of The Barrister Group
A wealthy Russian divorce battle has produced a sharp warning about trying to challenge foreign nuptial agreements in the wrong English court. Writing in NLJ this week, Vanessa Friend and Robert Jackson of Hodge Jones & Allen examine Timokhin v Timokhina, where the High Court enforced Russian judgments arising from a prenuptial agreement despite arguments based on the landmark Radmacher decision
An obscure Victorian tort may be heading for an unexpected revival after a significant Privy Council ruling that could reshape liability for dangerous escapes, according to Richard Buckley, barrister and emeritus professor of law at the University of Reading
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