Bill 249: Distribution of Fake Intimate Images Act

This bill primarily affects individuals and businesses involved in content creation, social media, photography, digital media, or any platform that hosts or distributes user-generated visual content in Nova Scotia. A small content studio, a social media manager, or even a solo digital artist who works with AI image-generation tools could face liability if they create or distribute fake intimate images without the depicted person's consent. Businesses that host or share intimate images with initial consent now have a legal obligation to actively remove that content if consent is later revoked — failure to do so exposes them to damages claims. The burden-of-proof shift in privacy disputes also means that anyone named as a respondent in a complaint bears the responsibility of proving the depicted person lacked a reasonable privacy expectation, which raises the legal risk for distributors of any size.