Education Minister Jason Clare calls for States to crack down on deepfakes nudifying students

Education Minister Jason Clare wants to crack down on deepfakes nudifying students and has urged his State counterparts to step up in tackling the disturbing issue.

Mr Clare has declared ahead of a convened education ministers conference on Friday that he wants to establish national standards to fight against the issue.

He said deepfakes had become the latest frontier of bullying — not just for students, but increasingly female teachers were being targeted.

It comes after eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant on Friday released a new tool kit to Australian schools to help deal with incidents.

Ms Inman Grant said where deepfakes used to be difficult to create and generally isolated to celebrities, cheap apps that use artificial intelligence where making it increasingly easier for students to create fake nude images of people without their consent.

“I can’t think of anything more horrific or terrifying than this. When one student cut and pastes the face of another student and then puts it on to a nude body and then puts it on to the internet to bully or harass other students,” Mr Clare told ABC on Friday.

“But not just other students, female teachers as well. That’s causing teachers to leave the profession and young people — it’s affecting their mental health and wellbeing.

“The eSafety Commissioner today has released a tool kit for schools about how to manage this. We’re going to get her to brief Education Ministers in a couple of months about this as well.

“But we also want to set national standards around how do we deal with this, and that’s another thing that we’ll be discussing at the meeting today.

“Bullying at schools is different today than it was when we were at school. It’s not just push and shove or stealing the lunch money, it can often be what happens online.”

WA Education Minister Sabine Winton was among counterparts from across the country who virtually attended the meeting.

She said the State Education department recently updated its advice on cyberbullying to include AI-generated materials and would review the new eSafety toolkit.

“One of the key issues raised was the use of devices for bullying in schools, including the creation of explicit deep fakes – which we’re seeing more instances of nationally,” she said.

“There is never any excuse for bullying, and I will work alongside other Education Ministers, the Department of Education, and key stakeholders including Principals, teachers and students to explore ways we can reduce this concerning trend in schools.

“I know there is more work to be done, and I am committed to working with the sector to address this unacceptable behaviour.”

State School Teachers Union of WA boss Matt Jarman said he was concerned by “deliberate” behaviour and welcomed the Federal Minister’s focus.

He said while nudifying deep fakes was still an emerging area of concern, social media abuse had been a long running and deeply concerning issue for the profession.

“Social media abuse of teachers is utterly unacceptable,” Mr Jarman said.

“It is attributable to teachers leaving the profession. We need community members to show greater respect to teachers.”

Speaking to the National Press Club in Canberra on Tuesday, Ms Inman Grant also revealed eSafety was launching deepfake incident management plans in Australian schools this week.

She also said she’ll register three industry prepared codes, forcing big tech to clamp down on restricting children from accessing porn, violent videos, and content which promotes disordered eating a self-harm.