28/10/2026
2 years suspended sentence! Not enough!
😡🤬
The young woman victim put her head in her hands and wept…
A precedent has been set in the first ever Australian prosecution of a then 18-year-old male student who used AI to produce and disseminate deepfake p**nographic images of a 17-year-old girl. And it’s not a good one.
William Hamish Yeates, 20, appeared in the District Court of South Australia for creating s*xually explicit images and videos of his Mercedes College classmate, which he shared over a period of months on online platforms Ero Me and X in 2024 and 2025.
The first time the female victim saw her graduation pics was on a p**n site.
Sentencing Yeates in South Australia’s District Court on Tuesday, Judge Anne Barnett said the offending had left his young victim “degraded and humiliated”.
“She now questions her judgment and whether she can trust other people,” she said.
“Understandably, she describes this part of her life as overwhelming."
However Judge Barnett decided to suspend a two-year sentence because of the Adelaide Law student’s “prior good character” and “undiagnosed issues” including autism. The Judge also said Yates did not have a “malicious motive” and had been introduced to online manosphere forums and followed misogynist and alleged ra**st Andrew Tate.
As the sentence was handed down, it was reported the young woman at the centre of the case put her head in her hands and wept.
We fought for laws to criminalise individuals who created and distributed these images. Members of our team are also survivors of Image Based S*xual Abuse.
However, now with Australia’s first ever ruling on production and sharing of non-consensual AI-generated s*xual material, we are deeply disappointed.
Other courts will look to this precedent to determine rulings on related cases.
Potential perpetrators will weigh up the risks and may think on balance they are worth it, before weaponing digital tools of abuse against their intended targets.
This does not auger well for women and girls who are mostly the victims of deepfake p**n production using their images.
Yeates’ harassing and degrading behaviour and yesterday’s court decision leaves the teen victim with life-long trauma – and puts at risk even more girls likely to suffer the same fate.
