Overview

• The bill establishes offences for using a carriage service to download, access, supply or facilitate AI tools designed to generate child sexual abuse material and for scraping data to train those tools
• Offenders would face maximum sentences of 15 years, with a public interest defence available for law enforcement, intelligence agencies and other authorised investigators
• Attorney-General Michelle Rowland has recognised a gap in current legislation and will consider the private member’s bill alongside a pending Online Safety Act review
• Child safety experts and independent MP Zali Steggall urged urgent action after a recent roundtable recommended swift criminalisation of AI-based abuse tools
• Easy online access to AI generators has diverted police resources and enabled offline creation of abuse images, complicating victim identification and evidence tracking