Private Member’s Bill cracks down on AI tools for creating child sexual abuse material (28 July 2025)
28 July 2025
Kate Chaney MP, Federal Member for Curtin, has today introduced a Private Member’s Bill (PMB) to the House of Representatives to create a new offence targeting emerging technologies designed to create, train, or facilitate the production of child sexual abuse material.
“We need to do everything we can to stop the alarming growth in child sexual abuse material. Deepfakes, AI-generated child sexual abuse material and child-like AI personas can be created by these sophisticated tools and are inundating law enforcement with more material.
“Right now, predators can access and download these sickening tools and train them to generate child sexual abuse material and then delete them before detection, to evade existing possession laws.
“The technology landscape is changing at such a rapid rate - we need to be across advancements in AI to make sure the laws keep up with the tools offenders use to create this horrific material.
This PMB is responding to one of the key recommendations from the First National Roundtable on Child Safety in the Age of AI, hosted by ICMEC Australia at Parliament House on Thursday 17 July.
Ms Chaney has worked with ICMEC Australia on the PMB to ensure it addresses the identified critical gap in the Criminal Code Act 1995 (Cth).
The PMB makes it an offence to download the technology for creating child abuse material and an offence to collect, scrape or distribute data with the intention to train or create technology for creating child abuse material. A public benefit defence is included for law enforcement and intelligence officers.
“This PMB will limit the ability to generate on-demand unlimited child sexual abuse material at scale, often tailored to specific preferences, including the use of real children’s images and details.
“The generation of this material impacts law enforcement’s ability to investigate offences due to the difficulty in distinguishing synthetic material from real material diverting precious resources from investigating sexual abuse and exploitation of real children.
“This PMB represents a proactive and targeted legislative response and we urge the Government to act.”
Additional quotes from relevant stakeholders
Zali Steggall OAM MP (Federal Member for Warringah): “This legislation responds to a concerning gap in the law and offers an essential step to protect children. Our laws must keep pace with AI to ensure safeguards are in place and perpetrators can’t exploit loopholes to produce or share abusive content.”
Jon Rouse APM (Retired Detective Inspector): "For several years, offenders have been training and exploiting AI generation tools to create child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and to obscure their digital footprints. While existing Australian legislation provides for the prosecution of CSAM production, it does not yet address the use of AI in generating such material—an urgent legislative gap. This bill marks a crucial advancement, equipping investigators and the judiciary with the means to directly confront the misuse of these technologies. It is important to recognise that real children have been harmed—their abuse images used to train these AI systems. This is not a victimless crime."
Colm Gannon (CEO, ICMEC Australia): "There was strong consensus at last week’s roundtable: tools built to generate child abuse material have no place in our society. This bill is a clear and targeted step to close an urgent gap, and a strong signal that protecting children must be front and centre as AI evolves. ICMEC Australia is proud to have convened national experts to help drive this shift from concern to action."
Dr Joel Scanlan (Senior Lecturer in cybersecurity and privacy, University of Tasmania): “This bill is a critical and proactive step in addressing the threat of AI-generated child sexual abuse material. By criminalising the training of AI systems to produce this content, this legislation closes a dangerous loophole and is fundamental to reducing the amount of child abuse material available on the internet.”
[ENDS]
Media contact: Sarah Silbert | P: 0400 813 300 | E: sarah.silbert@aph.gov.au