Perth woman tells PerthNow men at a Scarborough pub covertly photographed her and a friend and used an AI program to make sexualised images shown to the pair
A Perth woman told PerthNow (report carried by The West Australian and The Nightly, 7 October 2026) that on a Friday night at a Scarborough venue a group of eight to ten men sitting nearby began bantering with her and a friend, and that one of them photographed her without her knowledge, put the photo into an AI program and altered it into sexualised content showing her kissing several of the men. According to her account the men passed the image around and showed it to the two women while laughing, and had also made sexual content from a photo of her friend. The women reported the men to the venue, which banned them, and to Western Australia Police; in messages seen by PerthNow a detective wrote that there was at that point no law covering AI-created photos or media, while a WA Police spokesperson said state legislation criminalises non-consensual distribution of intimate images including AI-altered ones and that a statutory review is considering possession. The man who allegedly made the image later messaged her that he had made it as a joke and apologised. The images are not reported to have been distributed online; the tool is not identified; the account is the woman's own, with the man's private messages and the police correspondence as described by the newspaper.
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 10/10/2026