Deepfakes, Consent and Schools: What Educators Need to Know
Last week I had yet another call from a principal explaining that they’d just had a deepfake incident at the school. This time it was female students targeting another female student. In our work with schools over the last year, I have been hearing about similar deepfake incidents on a regular basis. Schools students use AI to create sexually explicit or humiliating images of people they know.
A deepfake is an image, video or audio recording that has been created or manipulated using artificial intelligence to make it appear authentic. While some deepfakes are harmless or entertaining, others are being used to humiliate, exploit and abuse people without their consent.
For schools, deepfake incidents are happening in classrooms, friendship groups and online after school. In the incidents being reported to us by schools, we are commonly hearing that boys are creating sexualised deepfake images of girls. However girls are also generating deepfakes of other girls as a form of revenge, bullying or social exclusion; and students of all genders are creating manipulated images or videos of teachers to ridicule, intimidate or embarrass them.
Although the motivations differfrom sexual harassment to revenge, bullying or “just a joke, the impact on victims is profound. The images may be fake, but the humiliation, fear and trauma are very real.
The Hannah Grundy deepfake case
One of Australia’s most significant deepfake cases involved Sydney teacher Hannah Grundy.
Grundy discovered that a man she had known for years had used AI to create sexually explicit deepfake images depicting her. The perpetrator published the images online alongside violent sexual fantasies and personal information, exposing her to ongoing fear and distress. The case required years of persistence before justice was achieved, and Australia’s laws at the time initially struggled to deal with AI-enabled abuse.
In a landmark outcome, in 2023 the offender Andy Hayler was sentenced to nine years’ in jail. The sentence recognised the devastating psychological harm caused by creating and distributing non-consensual deepfake sexual material.
Deepfakes and the laws in Australia
For some time, Australia’s laws struggled to address deepfake abuse because the images were “fake”, even though the harm was entirely real. That has now changed.
In response to cases like Hannah’s, in 2024 the Australian government introduced the Criminal Code Amendment (Deepfake Sexual Material) Act 2024. Under this new law:
It is an offence to share sexually explicit images or videos depicting an adult without consent via a carriage service (including social media and messaging apps).
The law applies regardless of whether the content is AI-altered or genuine.
Offenders can face up to six years in prison under the new provisions.
This legislation represents a critical step in safeguarding individuals from technology-driven abuse. State and territory laws may also apply, including offences relating to image-based abuse, stalking, harassment, child abuse material and the use of a carriage service to menace or harass. Where a person depicted is under 18, the legal consequences can be especially serious, even where the image was artificially generated.
For young people, this carries an important message: Creating a fake nude image of someone is not a prank and sharing it is not just online drama. Depending on the circumstances, these actions may amount to serious criminal offences, particularly where children are involved.
Schools are being warned about publicly sharing photos
More recently Australia’s eSafety Commissioner has warned schools that publicly available student photographs are increasingly being harvested and manipulated using AI tools.
In 2025 the eSafety Commissioner saw a double in reports from under 18s about digitally altered sexual images and deepfakes. In the first three months of 2026 eSafety has seen more than 100 reports involving AI-generated child sexual exploitation material that have originated in school settings, including cases where ordinary school photographs were used to create abusive material.
Images that once seemed harmless, like a class photo, an athletics carnival snapshot or a student award presentation, can now be downloaded, altered and transformed into sexually explicit or degrading content within minutes using readily available AI tools.
Schools are therefore being urged to reconsider posting identifiable student photos on public websites and social media, strengthen consent and image-use processes, and move photographs to secure internal platforms wherever possible.
What should we be teaching children about deepfakes?
At Learning Consent, one of the key content areas of our whole-of-school program is eSafety. Across both our primary and high school program, lessons focus on equipping students with critical digital literacy skills to ensure they are informed of the risks to their safety and how to protect themselves online, the consequences for unlawful behaviour and how to be a respectful digital citizen.
Students learn that consent applies not only to physical interactions, but also to photographs, videos, voices and digital identities. They learn about empathy, respect, online responsibility and the permanence of digital harm.
Although deepfakes may feel like yet another new frontier in the rapidly changing landscape of our children’s lives – it is the same guiding principles of respect, power and consent that are integral to the conversations we have with young people on the issue. Schools cannot prevent the misuse of AI, however, by teaching consent comprehensively, encouraging respectful digital behaviour and carefully considering how images are shared online, they can help create safer learning environments for everyone.
