Following this morning’s speech by Lisa Nandy, Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, in which she pledged to “tackle abusive and non-consensual images”, Equity is calling for the government to introduce personality rights.
Labour Party conference heard from Georgia Harrison, a TV personality, presenter and campaigner on preventing violence against women and girls. Georgia shared her experience of unauthorised personal video content being uploaded to online platforms and the impact it had on her. She spoke of the ‘online classroom’ where young boys are being ‘taught’ that women’s bodies are simply content and abuse is normalised.
Lisa Nandy said Labour will “call time on the violent indifference” towards online abuse. She pledged to “build a future where abusive content is not just removed, but removed forever.”
Generative-AI has made it quick and easy to create and share unauthorised digital replicas of real people’s face, body, voice or likeness.
Paul W Fleming, Equity General Secretary
Responding, Equity general secretary Paul W Fleming said: “We welcome the Culture Secretary’s pledge to tackle abusive online content. In addition to real photos and videos, we are increasingly seeing AI-generated content proliferate online, much of it unauthorised, malicious, sexual or violent.
“Generative-AI has made it quick and easy to create and share unauthorised digital replicas of real people’s face, body, voice or likeness. Performance and entertainment industries are high-risk areas because they are highly visual, with recordings of performers’ work available to wide audiences. While politicians, celebrities and public figures all face risks – these risks are there for anyone.
“We call on the government to act swiftly to introduce personality rights to tackle the unauthorised use of Gen-AI digital replicas and in doing so significantly strengthen the ability of artists and workers to fight deepfakes."
