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Creating a non-consensual intimate image or sexually explicit deepfake of an adult is now a criminal offence in England and Wales. Whether the said image is generated by AI, made in Photoshop, or requested to be created by someone else. The new deepfake offence is broader than most realise, and the first prosecutions are already moving through the police stations and courts. The following is what the UK Legislation actually states under the Online Safety Act 2023 framework and the new criminal offences introduced in 2026. We will also cover the various allegations, the potential defences, who is at risk, and how to respond proactively, if the police want to speak with you for an allegation of this kind.
In February 2026, Section 138 of the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 amended the Sexual Offences Act 2003 to create new offences covering the creation and sharing of a "purported sexual image" or "purported intimate image" of another adult without consent. The provisions came into force on 6 February 2026.
The wording is deliberately broad. The offence captures any image that appears to depict an identifiable real person in a sexual context/intimate context, regardless of how the image was made. AI-generated deepfake images and hyper-realistic synthetic media are the headline examples. The offence captures more:
These intimate image offences sit alongside the prior framework. The Online Safety Act 2023 already criminalised sharing intimate images without consent (the regime that displaced what the press still calls "revenge porn"), with deepfake content explicitly included and intimate image abuse treated as a priority offence. The 2026 amendments fill the gap by covering creation itself. The summary form carries a magistrates' court maximum. The indictable form is more serious, with custody and an unlimited fine available.
The mental element matters. The offence as drafted requires intent or, on some constructions, recklessness as to whether the image is sexual and whether consent was provided. A reasonable belief in consent is, on most readings, a defence in law. Sexual gratification, or an intent to cause alarm, distress, or humiliation, may also be relevant to charge or sentence. The boundaries of these terms are where many cases will be fought.
I have spent years in criminal practice, including time as a CPS-approved prosecutor. Broad statutes always look simple in the headlines. They are not simple in the police station where charges are stats, or courtrooms where convictions are the goal.
For most people facing an allegation under the new intimate image offences, the legal exposure is only one part of the problem. The harder part to deal with is the reputational and professional fallout that arrives long before any court sees the case. In most cases, our job is to prevent criminal charges at the pre charge stage. For those who wish to protect their interests at post charge, we urge you to seek legal advice immediately as we can a full case review under the Code for Crown Prosecutors.
If you are a regulated professional (doctor, solicitor, financial-services worker, senior executive, sportsperson), your regulator will hear about the allegation against you. A police investigation alone, without charge, can trigger a referral to your regulator. The SMCR fitness-and-propriety regime can put a finance role at risk before evidence is tested. The GMC interim-orders procedure can suspend a doctor's practice within weeks. Professional consequences run faster than the criminal process and need handling in parallel.
The press environment is a separate concern. The first prosecutions under the new law are watched closely by legal correspondents and tabloid newsrooms. Anonymity protections for suspects in sexual offences cases were never fully restored, and reporters know how to work around what does exist. Image-based abuse cases are press-magnets, and discretion in the first weeks is critical.
The Crown Prosecution Service operates under acute political pressure here. The End-to-End Rape Review of 2024 and the RASSO charging targets have created an institutional appetite to bring more cases to court. That is the system you are dealing with. It is not neutral, not quiet, and not patient.
For many of our clients, this is the worst, scariest part of their lives. The discretion you receive from your defence team in those first weeks is often the difference between containment and crisis. We work on the assumption that innocent until proven guilty has to be defended actively, because nothing about the surrounding system makes that easy.
When we represent someone in a sexual offences case, our stance is protective, not adversarial. We are not in the business of attacking complainants. We are in the business of making sure the case is tested properly, and that nothing avoidable damages our client's life along the way.
Most allegations follow a predictable path. Knowing it lets you intervene at the right point.
The complaint usually starts with a report to police, often by the person depicted, sometimes by a third party who has seen the image shared online. In some instances, such offending can become known if the police download the data on your phone, for an unrelated offence in law. The police open an investigation, seize devices, request platform data, and identify a suspect. At some point, they make contact. If you feel that you are being investigated, or are due to be investigated by the police, be proactive!
That contact is the changing point. The first option the police usually offer is a voluntary interview under caution. This is presented as a casual conversation. It is not. It is the trial starting at the police station, just without the courtroom. Anything said becomes evidence. Pre-charge engagement, before arrest or interview, is the window in which the most can be done. This is the heart of our pre-charge representation practice.
If charge is being considered, the case file goes to the CPS. The CPS applies the Full Code Test: is there a realistic prospect of conviction, and is prosecution in the public interest. On the first limb, strict proof of every element is required, including that the image is a "purported sexual" or "purported intimate image" within the statutory meaning, that the person depicted is identifiable, and that the requisite mental element is made out. We frontload defence work here because once charge is laid, options narrow sharply. We do not wait for the file to harden.
The defence work in this window typically includes forensic examination of the digital footprint left across devices and platforms, expert input on whether the image meets the statutory threshold (deepfake detection analysis can be decisive), identifiability evidence and counter-evidence (the law requires the person depicted to be identifiable, which is a genuine evidential question for AI-generated images and hyper-realistic synthetic media), mental-element representations to the CPS, and parallel handling of regulator notifications and any press exposure.
A well-prepared pre-charge submission can result in a No Further Action decision, ending the investigation without charge. Not every case ends that way. The cases where pre-charge work is done well end better than the cases where it is not.
Our practice is built on a simple proposition: the earlier the work starts, the more there is to work with. By the time charge is laid and a court date is set, much of what could have been changed has already been decided.
We work proactively. We frontload defence into the pre-charge phase. We leave no stone unturned, and we do not wait for the prosecution's case to crystallise. Those phrases are the operating manual for the firm, not slogans.
In my experience defending these cases, the moments that matter most happen before anyone enters a courtroom. The work that ends a case quietly with No Further Action, or that builds the foundations of a successful trial defence, is the work done in the days and weeks immediately after the police make first contact.
"The way I see it, the trial does not start in court. It starts the day the police pick up the phone. By the time the file lands on the CPS lawyer's desk, the case has been written. Our job is to make sure it has been written properly, with our client's account in it from the beginning."
Akram Mula, founder, Lex Vindico Group
We act for HNW individuals and regulated professionals across medicine, finance, law, and sport. The discretion required is the operational standard of our criminal defence practice, not a marketing line. Information is held tightly. Communications run through secure channels.
Our team is led by Akram Mula, a Solicitor Advocate and former CPS-approved prosecutor. Having sat on the prosecution side and moved to defence, our submissions read like the prosecutor's own internal review. We know what their gatekeepers look for. We write to that audience.
The new law is so new that the case-types are still settling. These are the patterns we are encountering.
1. AI-generated image, no distribution. Some examples of images generated in our cases have been by Chat GPT, Grok, DALL-E and CapCut. A user generates an image using publicly available AI software. The image is never shared. A later device seizure reveals it. The legal exposure is the creation conduct itself. The defence questions are sharp: is the person depicted identifiable, was the user aware that AI models would produce content of this kind, and what is the mens rea position. Mental-element representations of this exact shape carry weight when properly evidenced. It is also important to note how the said image came to be on the device i.e. whether it was searched for, or downloaded (production of catched image).
2. Photoshop creation, single recipient. A traditional photoshop edit, where a real person's face is altered onto a sexual body. The image is sent to one other person. People assume the new offence is "AI only". It is not. The conduct is squarely within the statute, and a single recipient is still distribution. The defence work focuses on intent, identifiability, context, and whether sexual gratification was the purpose of it's creation.
3. Commissioning a third party. The person under investigation did not create the image but instructed someone else to do so. In such a case, both parties may well face prosecution. The defence work involves separating roles, examining communications, and assessing whether the requested image was within the statutory definition at the point of 'commissioning' or 'requesting' another person to create a purported intimate image of an adult . Cases at this end can also touch on the indecent images regime (pseudo photographs and related categories), which has overlapping but distinct elements in law.
4. Historic image surfacing post-commencement. An image was created before 6 February 2026. It surfaces afterwards, perhaps via device seizure or because it is shared online again. Whether the new offence applies depends on conduct after commencement, not the original creation date. New sharing engages the new law. Mere discovery on an old device is more complex, with the older legal regime potentially still relevant.
5. Mistaken identity or defence-of-knowledge. The user says the model output, the recipient, or the depicted person was not what they understood it to be. AI models can stray from prompts. Recipients can claim they did not realise that image was going to be created, or indeed sent. These are real evidential issues, not excuses, and they require expert input on model behaviour, metadata, and the chain of communication, especially where criminal records and futures are concerned.
Each of these scenarios is defensible in law. Treating them as a single pattern is a mistake. So is treating any of them as hopeless.
The statute uses the wording deliberately to catch any image that appears to depict a real person in a sexual or intimate context, whether the image is genuine, AI-generated, photoshopped, or composite. The threshold is whether a reasonable viewer would understand the image to be sexual and to depict the named person.
The offence applies to conduct after commencement. An image created before that date and never shared again afterwards is not retrospectively criminalised. New sharing or new creation conduct after 6 February 2026 falls within the law.
Creation alone is enough under the 2025 amendments. Sharing intimate images without consent is treated separately, with sentencing implications and potential overlap with the Online Safety Act 2023 sharing offence.
The summary form carries a magistrates' court maximum. The indictable form, particularly where sharing is involved, can attract custody and an unlimited fine. The actual sentence depends on conduct, harm, and personal circumstances.
Intent and context are part of the legal test, but a private-joke explanation does not by itself defeat the offence. The image is still an intimate image of an identifiable person, and consent is still absent. The explanation needs to land with the CPS, not with friends.
Identifiability is part of the statutory test. If a viewer would not recognise the person, the charge is harder to make out. This is a genuine evidential question, particularly for AI-generated content where likeness can be fluid. Expert input is often needed.
Neither answer is right for every case. The voluntary interview is presented as the soft option. It is, in fact, an evidential moment. Going in unrepresented is the most common avoidable mistake we see. The only safe step is to take advice before deciding. Our contact line is monitored for urgent matters.
Lex Vindico Group is a London-based criminal defence firm, founded by Akram Mula. We act for HNW individuals and regulated professionals across the UK and internationally. Our work is concentrated where the stakes are highest: pre-charge representation, sexual offences defence, financial crime, and serious crime.
What we offer in cases of this kind is rare in one firm: a proactive defence stance that moves before the prosecution does, the operational discretion that HNW and regulated-professional work demands, and direct courtroom and CPS experience including a CPS-approved prosecutor at the head of the firm.
We are not the cheapest firm in London.We are the firm you instruct when getting it right the first time matters more than the price.
Please note: As a specialist private practice, we are highly selective about the cases we accept. And in serious investigations, waiting too long to seek the right advice can be a catastrophic mistake. Because by the time many people realise how serious the situation has become… the process is already moving around the
Pre-charge engagement is the window where the most can be achieved proactively. Once charge is laid, options narrow. If you have been contacted by police about a deepfake, intimate image, or "purported sexual image" allegation, or have reason to believe contact may be expected, the sooner we are involved, the more we can do to prot
We offer confidential consultations, in person at our London offices or remotely by secure call. Initial enquiries are handled discreetly and quickly.
Confidential help is one phone call away. The first conversation is free of charge and as detailed as you need. If you are dealing with this kind of allegation, you do not have to deal with it alone. Speak to us today.
Lex Vindico Group is regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. We represent individuals nationally across England and Wales in criminal, regulatory, and parallel-proceedings defence at every stage, and most decisively, at the pre-charge stage.
This article is written by Akram Mula, LLM, Solicitor Advocate and CPS-approved Prosecutor, founder of Lex Vindico Group. It is general legal information about a recently enacted statutory offence, not legal advice on any specific case. Statutory references in this article are flagged for editorial verification before publication. For advice on your individual circumstances, contact our team directly.
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