Australia to tackle deepfake nudes, online stalking

Australia Vows to Slap Down Deepfake Nudes and Digital Stalkers – What Malta Can Learn From the Crackdown

By Maria Pace, Valletta

MELBOURNE might be 15,000 kilometres away, but when Australia’s federal government announced sweeping new laws this week to criminalise AI-generated “deepfake” nudes and online stalking, the ripple was felt almost immediately in Maltese group chats, university lecture halls and even the quiet back pews of parish churches.

Under the proposed legislation, anyone who uses artificial intelligence to create or share sexual images of another person without consent faces up to six years in prison. Stalking and doxxing – the malicious release of personal data – will carry penalties of up to five years. For Malta, where 94 % of 16- to 24-year-olds scroll TikTok daily and the University of Malta’s cyber-security department reports a 300 % jump in “image-based abuse” complaints since 2021, the Australian blueprint is being watched like the final episode of a Netflix thriller.

“Malta is small; reputations are everything,” explains Dr Clarissa Zahra, a criminologist at the university who has interviewed 120 Maltese victims of digital abuse. “A single fake nude can circle the island’s WhatsApp groups before the victim finishes lunch break. Australia’s decision shows that parliaments are finally catching up with the weaponisation of intimacy.”

The timing is uncanny. Just last month, Malta’s Commissioner for Standards in Public Life revealed that two separate female MPs received AI-generated pornographic images during the election campaign. The police opened investigations but admitted they were “navigating uncharted waters”. Meanwhile, Gozitan activist group #GħarixSafe has collected more than 3,000 signatures demanding a national helpline for victims of “digital rape”, their term for non-consensual deepfake porn.

Culture matters here. Maltese society still leans on the twin pillars of honour and family pride; a compromising photo, even a fabricated one, can torpedo university admissions, job prospects or marriage negotiations. “In our villages, the gossip still travels faster than fibre-optic cable,” says 19-year-old Martina* from Żebbuġ, who found her face spliced onto a pornographic video last year. “I didn’t tell my parents for weeks. The shame felt bigger than the crime.”

Australia’s proposed laws place the burden of proof squarely on the perpetrator, not the victim – a radical shift that Maltese legal experts say could inspire domestic reform. Currently, Malta relies on a patchwork of 19th-century defamation statutes and a 2018 EU-inspired directive that critics call “a blunt knife against a drone strike”.

But there is also optimism. The Malta Digital Innovation Authority (MDIA) quietly launched a €2 million sandbox this year to test blockchain-based watermarking that could flag manipulated media before it spreads. And local start-up DeepTrace – founded by two former MIT students who returned to Sliema during the pandemic – claims its detection algorithm spots deepfakes with 97 % accuracy. “If Australia can legislate, Malta can innovate,” says co-founder Luke Camilleri, whose company has already partnered with three secondary schools to pilot “consent literacy” workshops.

Religious leaders are joining the conversation. “Technology is morally neutral, but its use never is,” warns Fr Joe Borg, speaking from the Archbishop’s Curia in Floriana. His office is preparing a pastoral letter urging parish youth groups to treat digital spaces as extensions of “our community courtyard”, where the same rules of respect apply.

The ultimate test will be political will. Malta’s parliament rises for the summer in two weeks. Justice Minister Jonathan Attard told Hot Malta he is “studying the Australian model closely” and will meet victims’ advocates after recess. Opposition MP Eve Borg Bonello has already filed a private member’s bill proposing six-year sentences for malicious deepfakes; its first reading is scheduled for October.

Back in Żebbuġ, Martina has returned to her evening classes at MCAST, buoyed by the news from Down Under. “For the first time, I feel the law might move faster than the humiliation,” she says. “If Australia can stand up for us, maybe Malta will too.”