"Deepfake" Pornographic Imagery
Request
1. The number of reports made to the police force relating to the creation of “deepfake” pornographic imagery over the past five years, broken down by year
2. The referral route of the report where applicable, including but not limited to a member of the public, a company, a social media firm, a school/teachers etc.
3. The gender of the alleged victim(s) where stated
4. The age of the alleged victim(s) where stated
5. The number of arrests made in relation to the creation of the deepfake imagery over the past five years, broken down by year
6. The number of people charged in relation to the creation of the deepfake imagery over the past five years, broken down by year
7. The number of people released on bail in relation to the creation of the deepfake imagery over the past five years broken down by year, and the reasons why they were released
8. The gender of those arrested, charged or released on bail over the past five years, broken down by year
9. The average length for an investigation into a report of deepfake imagery over the past five years, broken down by year
Response
Section 12(1) – Exemption where cost of compliance exceeds appropriate limit
I approached the administrator for South Yorkshire Police’s Performance and Governance Team. They reported that we do not have an arrest reason for this new offence so every arrest from 31/01/2024 would need manually checking, which would involve 22379 arrests recorded on 12343 custody records. At a consecutive 3 minutes per custody record this would take 617.15 hours.
In essence, we would have to review and manually check all relevant incidents to extract the level of detail of the cases that met the criteria of your request; this process would take much longer than 18 hours’ work.
The Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004 provide that the cost limit for non-central government public authorities is £450. This must be calculated at the rate of £25 per hour, providing an effective time limit of 18 hours.
Guidance from the Information Commissioner to public authorities is that where one part of a request is reasonably estimated to exceed the appropriate limit then the authority is not obliged to consider or comply with the remainder of the request up to the point at which the appropriate limit has been reached. Please note point 30 of the below link:
Section 16 - Duty to Provide advice and Assistance
Under Section 16 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, my duty to provide advice and assistance to anyone making a request for information.
Although excess cost removes the force's obligations under the Freedom of Information Act, as a gesture of goodwill, I have supplied information, relative to your request, retrieved or available before it was realised that the fees limit would be exceeded.
I trust this is helpful, but it does not affect our legal right to rely on the fees regulations for the remainder of your request neither does it bind South Yorkshire Police to any commitment that it will release information in such a manner in the future.
We approached the administrator for South Yorkshire Police’s Incident Management System. The Smart system records the majority of calls to South Yorkshire Police requiring the specific deployment of police resources, whether reported by members of the public via 999 or 101 or ‘happened upon’ by officers and staff in the course of their duties. The log runs as a running commentary of an incident as it unfolds and has limited search capability.
1. I have done a search from the 1st January 2019 up to the 30th June 2024 for the following:
• Deep Fake
• Deepfake
• Deep-fake
It only turned up 1 example in 2024
Please note, every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that data has been extracted from data sources used by this force for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale recording systems and information assets.
The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures/data for any requests may have limitations, and this should be taken into account when those data are used.
Police forces do not use generic systems or identical procedures for capturing the data. For these reasons this response to your questions should not be used for comparison purposes with responses you may receive from other police forces.