An Alberta peace officer who used artificial intelligence to create sexualised images of women including his own colleagues will not face criminal charges, the province’s police watchdog has found.
The Alberta Serious Incident Response Team, known as ASIRT, said in a report issued on Wednesday that the officer, a member of the Alberta Sheriffs, had committed no offence under the law as it stood when the images were found.
“The [officer’s] conduct is serious,” the report said. “It will have lasting impacts on his female co-workers and their ability to feel safe in the workplace.”
What was found
The investigation began earlier this year after a family member found AI-generated photographs of women on the officer’s telephone and the employer became involved, according to the report as reported by CBC News.
The officer admitted using an AI application to create the images. He used non-intimate photographs the women had posted on social media as the source material.
ASIRT found no evidence that he had tried to distribute the images.
The law
Canada’s Criminal Code has for years made it an offence to publish, distribute, transmit, sell, make available or advertise an intimate image of a person without their consent, under section 162.1. The definition required a visual recording of the person, which meant fabricated images did not clearly fall within it.
That changed with Bill C-16, the Protecting Victims Act, which received Royal Assent on 18 June and whose main Criminal Code provisions came into force on 18 July. It adds to the definition of an intimate image “a visual representation that is made by any electronic or mechanical means and that shows an identifiable person who is depicted as nude, as exposing their sexual organs or as engaged in explicit sexual activity, if the depiction is likely to be mistaken for a visual recording of that person”, according to the Canadian Bar Association’s submission on the bill.
The Act also made it a separate offence to threaten to distribute an intimate image, including a fabricated one, even where nothing is shared.
Distribution carries a maximum of five years’ imprisonment. Creation or possession with intent to share carries two years.
Those changes took effect weeks after the photographs were found and the investigation began.
What the watchdog would not say
ASIRT noted the change in its report. A spokesman for the Police Review Commission, the independent body that includes ASIRT, said it was mentioned only to show the agency was aware of it.
“Including this information is not intended to state, or even imply, that the sheriff would have been charged under the law as it’s currently written,” Jason van Rassel said in an email.
Because ASIRT’s mandate covers criminal matters only, the report said the officer’s conduct was best addressed by the Alberta Sheriffs under their code of conduct.
At work
Alberta’s Ministry of Public Safety, which oversees the sheriffs, said the officer had been removed from active duty pending an internal investigation.
“The Alberta Sheriffs Branch is committed to upholding the values of accountability, integrity and respect,” a spokeswoman, Sheena Campbell, said in a statement.
The ministry would not say whether he was still being paid, saying it would be inappropriate to comment further while the internal investigation continued.
The Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, which represents about 1,000 sheriffs, declined to comment when contacted by CBC News.
The Alberta Sheriffs are a provincially managed service employing peace officers in court and government security, fish and wildlife conservation and highway patrol.