Canada criminalized sharing deepfake porn. Making it is still legal
A new Canadian law bans sharing non-consensual sexual deepfakes, but critics say it lets image creators, requesters and lookalike loopholes off the hook.
What happened: In June 2026, Canada passed the Protecting Victims Act (Bill C-16), making it a crime for the first time to share sexual deepfakes of someone without consent. Parliament also amended election law against political deepfakes and tabled the Safe Social Media Act to regulate platforms and chatbots. The moves follow scandals like X's chatbot Grok reportedly generating up to 200 non-consensual sexual images a minute, including thousands that appeared to depict children, and a nudifying-app industry already worth an estimated $36 million a year in 2025.
Why it matters: Non-consensual sexual deepfakes are described by researchers as a fast-growing form of gender-based violence, capable of ruining reputations, relationships and safety long before a victim even knows an image exists. Canada's reform is a genuine first step for criminal law, but legal scholars argue it targets only the final act of sharing an image, leaving the people who make, request, pay for or spread it largely untouched, and only counts images realistic enough to pass as real photos.
The gaps, plainly: Three problems stand out. First, the law only covers images 'likely to be mistaken' for real ones, so a deepfake with obvious tells, like fantasy elements or a watermark, could dodge prosecution even though the violation is identical. Second, only distributors are criminalized, not creators, requesters or people who reshare or use images for extortion. Third, the proposed Safe Social Media Act explicitly does not require platforms to proactively search for this content, so enforcement only kicks in after an image has already spread.
How other countries compare: The UK's 2025 Data (Use and Access) Act already criminalizes creating or requesting a sexual deepfake, not just sharing one. South Korea goes further, punishing possession and viewing too. Canada's own election-deepfake law criminalizes solicitation and creation of political fakes, showing lawmakers already accept that model elsewhere. Advocates want that same standard applied to sexual imagery, plus safeguards built into image-generating tools before release rather than takedowns after harm is done.