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The new face of online abuse

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From deepfakes to cyberflashing, 2025 must be the year to eliminate the technology-facilitated abuse of women, write Jenni Dempster KC & Maleeka Bokhari

The Online Safety Act 2023 (OSA 2023) is an important legislative step which reaffirms the UK’s commitment to regulating harmful online content, particularly against women and children. It provides much-needed protection and safeguards in an evolving digital landscape where women are disproportionately impacted by technology-facilitated abuse. A report by artificial intelligence (AI) firm DeepTrace, which conducted 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.

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.

Deepfake crackdown

The Alliance for Universal Digital Rights defines deepfakes as ‘synthetic media that have been digitally manipulated to replace one person’s likeness convincingly with that

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NEWS
The Law Society RFC Festival of Sport returns next month, bringing together legal and financial services professionals for one of the sector’s largest annual sporting events
Legal aid deserts leave almost one in four without adequate access to justice
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has warned solicitors and law firms that using artificial intelligence does not alter their professional obligations, amid concerns over inaccurate legal material and client confidentiality
From forgotten interest claims to case-management appeals, a string of procedural developments offers useful—and occasionally cautionary—lessons for practitioners

Jonathan Fisher KC highlights that it now accounts for around 40% of criminal offences, with roughly 70% involving technology, and argues that the UK cannot simply prosecute its way out of the problem. Detection, investigation and prosecution all require improvement, while different fraud types demand tailored responses.

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