Why MP held up naked photo of herself in front of entire parliament

MPs witnessed a powerful moment in New Zealand's parliament earlier this month when a female politician held up a naked photo of herself.

Despite being 'absolutely terrified', Laura McClure bravely bared it all in front of her peers to get her point across on 14 May.

Granted, the image of her in the nude was heavily censored, but it still painted a vivid picture for members of the House of Representatives.

McClure explained she had found it concerningly uncomplicated to mock up the explicit snap of herself using artificial intelligence, telling parliament it took her just a few minutes.

She wants New Zealand to take heed of the likes of the UK, US, China and Australia by bringing in strict rules to prohibit people from using the technology to create disturbing deepfakes.

And to emphasise just how important she believes this is, the member of the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers (ACT) party made a digitally manipulated photo of herself.

Laura McClure mocked up a nude deepfake of herself to show her parliamentary peers just how simple it is to do (Instagram/@lauramcclure)

Clutching the A3 printout, McClure told her fellow politicians a few weeks ago: "This image is a naked image of me, but it’s not real. It took me less than five minutes to make a series of deepfakes of myself."

Emphasising just how easy it is to access this kind of technology, she added: "I found it after a quick Google search."

The MP explained that she had used one of hundreds of websites which allow users to upload an image or video of someone before 'nudifying' them.

According to the Law Association of New Zealand, up to 95 percent of online deepfake videos are non-consensually created pornography, while 90 percent of them depict women.

McClure said she created the deepfakes of herself to demonstrate just how realistic they can be - and therefore, just how much damage they can have on people's lives.

"For the victims, it is degrading and it is devastating," she said, as per the New Zealand Herald. "It gave me the ick having to stand in Parliament and hold up the photo of myself, even knowing that it’s not actually me.

"Holding that up in Parliament was absolutely terrifying, it did rattle me."

The mother-of-two, from Christchurch, also took to Instagram to educate her followers on why she did it, explaining she hoped to illustrate just how 'real - and easy' these are to create.

McClure shared a short video of her holding the photo alongside the caption: "The problem isn’t the tech itself, but how it's being misused to abuse people. Our laws need to catch up."

In the clip, the politician said: "So I just did something a little bit crazy and something I never thought I would actually do in parliament. I held up this - it is a deep fake that I made of myself in a matter of minutes, just on the internet.

"It was actually very, very easy to do.

"In the general debate in the house, I brought to the attention of all the other members of parliament about how easy it is to do this and how much abuse and harm it is causing, particularly for our young Kiwi's and more likely to be our young females."

It's a concern shared by the President of the Secondary Principals’ Association, Vaughan Couillault, too.

The powerful moment stunned her fellow MPs (NZ Parliament)

"It’s not as low-level and as simple as the perpetrator thinks it is," he said. "It’s not cheap entertainment - it’s life-damaging work."

McClure has proposed a change in the law which will police the online sphere of sexually explicit deepfakes, known as the Deepfake Digital Harm and Exploitation Bill.

Describing how this would work, she previously explained: "[It] expands existing legislation around revenge porn and intimate recordings, and ensures that those who produce or share deepfakes without consent face criminal accountability, and victims have clear pathways to seek redress and removal of harmful content."

Although there are laws already in place in New Zealand regarding harmful online content, none of them specifically address the issue of deepfakes.

According to McClure, the country needs to catch up to other nations who have already taken action in regards to the worrying capabilities of AI.

In another Instagram post, she wrote: "No one should ever be the target of deepfake porn - especially without their consent. This is abuse, plain and simple. Our laws haven’t caught up, and that needs to change.

"It’s time to close the gap and hold offenders accountable. Now."

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