Legal Interests Infringed by Deepfake Pornography and Criminal Law Responses

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-593-5_23How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Deepfakes; Digital Sexual Violence; Sexual Autonomy; Criminal Regulation; Non-Contact Sexual Assault

Abstract

The misuse of deepfake technology in the pornography sector has evolved from isolated technical pranks into targeted digital sexual violence against specific individuals. Its essence lies in the unauthorized use of artificial intelligence to produce and disseminate false pornographic imagery, thereby imposing psychological coercion and personal dignity violations within virtual spaces. Such acts inflict multiple harms on individual psychological trauma, the foundation of social trust, and legal order. Traditional criminal charges like defamation and dissemination of obscene materials for profit exhibit clear limitations in their applicability. Drawing from the non-contact harm model established in “remote indecent assault” cases, the legal protection of sexual autonomy should extend from physical safeguards to the protection of digital personas. This paper proposes a three-dimensional regulatory framework: interpretatively, expanding the purpose-based scope of the legal interest protected by the crime of insult to incorporate core wrongful acts into existing norms; legislatively, drawing on international experience to establish specialized criminal offenses; and institutionally, building coordinated domestic and international governance mechanisms. This approach aims to strike a balance between safeguarding personal dignity and promoting technological innovation.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Jintao Zhao
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/06/30
TI  - Legal Interests Infringed by Deepfake Pornography and Criminal Law Responses
BT  - Proceedings of the 2026 5th International Conference on Humanities, Wisdom Education and Service Management (HWESM 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 192
EP  - 202
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-593-5_23
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-593-5_23
ID  - Zhao2026
ER  -