Deepfake Harm Grows More Serious
The generation and spread of sexual images using AI deepfakes (technology that composites a real person's face onto other footage) has surged since the start of 2024. Victims range from celebrities to ordinary women, and according to the National Police Agency, the number of harm-related consultations in the first half of 2024 was more than triple the figure for the same period a year earlier.
Limits of Current Law
The current offense of photographing sexual postures and the like (in force since 2023) targets actual acts of filming, and there are interpretive problems in applying it to sexual images generated by AI. Some also point out that a tendency to downplay the harm on the grounds that the images "are not real" inflicts further injury on victims.
Direction of New Legislation
From the autumn of 2024, the government and both ruling and opposition parties began in earnest to consider new legislation, or amendments to existing law, that would explicitly govern AI-generated sexual content. They are examining a regulatory framework suited to conditions in Japan while also referring to the EU's "AI Act" and the United Kingdom's "Online Safety Act."
This article was compiled based on publicly available information.