As Parliament calls for submissions on a law change to make deepfake crimes easier to prosecute, victim Summer Murphy shares her traumatic story with Gill Higgins.
Summer Murphy wants every New Zealander to know her story – even though it’s one that involved her being humiliated and embarrassed. She sees the importance of speaking up about the extreme harm that AI-manipulated sexually explicit images, known as deepfakes, can cause.
Deepfake porn victim speaks out – Watch this story on TVNZ+.
And with Parliament calling for submissions on a proposed law aimed at closing a gap for victims, Murphy sees now as the time to make the public aware of what happened to her and its impact.
Murphy was the victim of the first deepfake prosecution in New Zealand. The offender was sentenced in the North Shore District Court last week.
A crime that instills lasting fear
Murphy was 19 in 2024 when she was one of four young women targeted by the same offender. He used photos taken from their social media accounts to create pornographic deepfake images. Some of Murphy’s original pictures were from when she was 14 or 15. One showed an innocent family moment with her father and was turned by the offender into sexualised material.
Dozens of explicit images of Murphy were uploaded to a pornography website. Her real name was attached, alongside an insulting description “teen, blonde, slut”. The images were also sent to her friends and family.
In a victim impact statement read in the North Shore District Court last week, Murphy said the offending had changed her life, her family and her future.
“What he did is not a mistake, a misunderstanding, or something minor,” she said. “It was a choice knowing the harm it was going to cause.”
She said she now lives with “fear that does not turn off” and struggles to trust people.
Police laid charges in December 2024 and the defendant pleaded guilty in September 2025.
A central issue that arose during his sentencing this month was whether the offending should be treated as sexual offending. Murphy said she was angry at any suggestion it was not.
“The photos were manipulated to show me naked and explicit,” she said.
The judge agreed, ruling it was sexual offending — a finding Murphy said was important for future victims.
The judge also indicated that the offender’s name suppression would be lifted, if an appeal wasn’t successful in 15 working days. In the meantime, he agreed to allow Murphy, as a victim, to have her suppression lifted. It means Murphy can finally be upfront about all she’s been through. She says the alternative has been exhausting. “It was so tiring always having to dodge the question, like ‘what’s going on’ or ‘where you going?’ – the lies I told were a lot more exhausting than the truth.”
When it came to the sentencing, Murphy says she’d been told to expect the worst and that he might be discharged without conviction. “That would break me,” she says. But a conviction was made, with the judge giving the offender 24 months’ intensive supervision.
Overall, Murphy is happy with the result. She didn’t think jail was appropriate. “I think supervision is much better than jail because, this way, he’s going to be able to get the help he needs.”
Call for submissions on bill to tighten laws
The case comes as the Deepfake Digital Harm and Exploitation Bill heads to Parliament’s Social Services and Community Committee. The committee is calling for public submissions, which close at 11.59pm on Friday, June 19, 2026.
The bill would amend the Crimes Act 1961 and the Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015 by expanding the definition of an “intimate visual recording” to include images that are created, synthesised or altered to appear intimate.
Parliament says the change would prohibit posting digitally altered or synthesised recordings of people without their consent.
Under the current law Murphy was required to prove the offender intended to cause harm – that’s notoriously difficult to do and was achieved by Murphy by eliciting a phone confession by the offender in which he stated that he’d felt rejected by her in high school.
Supporters of the bill say the proposed change would make it easier for victims of deepfake abuse to seek justice, as intent wouldn’t need to be proven.
After last week’s sentencing, Murphy said she was at peace with the results of the court case.
“It gives me hope people do listen”
Deepfake porn victim speaks out – Watch this story on TVNZ+.
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