UK Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, Section 138 (Purported Intimate Image Offence)

Properties

kind: law
target: likeness
jurisdiction: UK
mechanism: Inserts section 66E into the Sexual Offences Act 2003: a person commits an offence if they intentionally create a 'purported intimate image' of another person, that person does not consent to the creation, and the creator does not reasonably believe the person consents; a purported intimate image is one that appears to be, or include, a photograph or film of the person (but is not, or not only, one), appears to be of an adult, and appears to show the person in an intimate state.
status: in-effect
owns: Criminalizes the act of creation itself, prior to and independent of any distribution or hosting, distinct from take-it-down-act and ca-deepfake-pornography-act; uses a 'reasonable belief in consent' defence tied to steps the creator took to ascertain consent, a mens rea structure not present in any tracked US entity.
source: UK Public General Acts, Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, section 138 (inserting section 66E into the Sexual Offences Act 2003)
notes: In force since 6 February 2026 per multiple 2026 legal-commentary sources (Lawtons, Olliers, DPP Law); the offence is also designated a priority offence under the Online Safety Act, obliging platforms to take proactive removal steps, per the same secondary reporting, not independently re-confirmed against the Online Safety Act's own priority-offence schedule in this pass. The quote's list-item connectors were run together as '(a)A' with no space in the raw HTML-to-text fetch; spacing has been restored here to standard prose without altering wording.

Provenance

Source: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2025/18/section/138/enacted

Properties

kind

law

target

likeness

jurisdiction

mechanism

Inserts section 66E into the Sexual Offences Act 2003: a person commits an offence if they intentionally create a 'purported intimate image' of another person, that person does not consent to the creation, and the creator does not reasonably believe the person consents; a purported intimate image is one that appears to be, or include, a photograph or film of the person (but is not, or not only, one), appears to be of an adult, and appears to show the person in an intimate state.

status

in-effect

owns

Criminalizes the act of creation itself, prior to and independent of any distribution or hosting, distinct from take-it-down-act and ca-deepfake-pornography-act; uses a 'reasonable belief in consent' defence tied to steps the creator took to ascertain consent, a mens rea structure not present in any tracked US entity.

source

UK Public General Acts, Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, section 138 (inserting section 66E into the Sexual Offences Act 2003)

notes

In force since 6 February 2026 per multiple 2026 legal-commentary sources (Lawtons, Olliers, DPP Law); the offence is also designated a priority offence under the Online Safety Act, obliging platforms to take proactive removal steps, per the same secondary reporting, not independently re-confirmed against the Online Safety Act's own priority-offence schedule in this pass. The quote's list-item connectors were run together as '(a)A' with no space in the raw HTML-to-text fetch; spacing has been restored here to standard prose without altering wording.