Nova Scotia man facing dozens of counts in AI deepfake harassment case

CITYnews halifax / By Natasha O’Neill

A multi-jurisdictional police investigation led to the arrests of two men who officials say used artificial intelligence to create fake images of female victims to exploit them.

Ottawa police are laying several charges against two men who are not from the nation’s capital. They received a report of harmful online content showing the victim, which prompted officers to investigate. Police focused their case on potential criminal harassment and the online exploitation of the women, where images were created and posted that were “harmful sexual content without consent.”

“This includes but is not limited to AI deepfakes,” the press release notes.

Investigators said that the impacts of the case reached beyond eastern Ontario, forcing officials to loop in police from other areas.

As a result, Stephen Lowe, 60, of Maitland, N.S. is facing charges of:

• Harassment by combination of prohibited conduct (25 counts)
• Uttering Threats (25 counts)
• Publish/Possess obscene material for distribution (25 counts)
• Print/publish/possess to publish child sexual abuse material (2 counts)
• Import/sell/distribute, etc. child sexual abuse material (2 counts)

The accused was arrested in February and remains in custody.

Gregry Van Beek, 38, of West Nipissing, Ont. is charged with:

• Harassment by watching and besetting (2 counts)
• Conspiracy to commit an indictable offence (1 count)
• Uttering threats (2 counts)
• Publish intimate image without consent (2 counts)

He was arrested in early May and remains in police custody.

“This case highlights the growing challenges posed by technology-facilitated sexual violence and the evolving nature of online harms,” Ottawa police said.

The matter is before the courts and is subject to a publication ban.

Bill criminalizing sexual deepfakes passes in committee

A House of Commons committee has amended a proposed bill that would criminalize sexual deepfakes to ensure it covers “nearly nude” images.

The change to Bill C-16 comes after experts warned the original version of the bill likely would not cover many of the images created by Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot, which proliferated on his X platform at the beginning of this year.

The original version of the bill would have criminalized the non-consensual sharing of images which show the subject nude, exposing their sexual organs or engaged in explicit sexual activity. The images created by Grok — such as edits of photos of women to depict them wearing see-through bikinis — may not meet that standard.

MPs on the justice committee voted in favour of amendments put forward by Conservative MP Andrew Lawton to change the wording of the legislation to address images in which the subject is nude or “nearly nude.”

“We are seeing with the advancement of technology these very sophisticated and in some cases quite traumatizing assaults taking place. It simply just ensures that a small technicality is not excluding something that I think this law intends to capture,” he said.

The committee wrapped up its clause-by-clause process, through which amendments to a bill are made. The bill must make its way through the Senate before it becomes law.

With files from Chuck Chiang and Anja Karadeglija, The Canadian Press.