Singapore's amendments to the Criminal Law (Miscellaneous Amendments) Act 2025, passed by Parliament on 4 November 2025, commence on 17 August 2026. Among them is a new offence of producing intimate images without consent — explicitly including AI-generated material.

The definitional change that does the work

From 17 August, the definition of intimate images covers material generated to depict a person without altering an original image or recording. That sentence closes the gap most image-abuse laws still have: statutes written around editing a real photograph do not obviously reach output produced from a text prompt, where nothing was altered because nothing existed. Singapore has removed the need for an original.

The penalties

Production of non-consensual intimate images is punishable by imprisonment of up to two years, a fine, or both. Where the material depicts a person under 14, imprisonment becomes mandatory for up to two years, and the offender is also liable to a fine or caning.

What else commences

Sexual grooming becomes an offence as long as the travel of either party commenced in Singapore, even if the parties meet or intend to meet overseas — an extraterritorial reach aimed at offenders who move the act abroad. Enhanced penalties now extend to obscene material depicting minors under 18, raised from 16, and apply to electronic circulation to 10 or more people. Managers of online spaces that facilitate such circulation face enhanced penalties of their own.

Read the date correctly

Nothing was passed this week. Parliament legislated in November 2025; what is happening now is commencement — the point at which the provisions become enforceable. Reporting this as new legislation misplaces it by nine months, and the practical significance is precisely that the enforcement date has arrived.

Where it sits internationally

Most jurisdictions addressing synthetic intimate imagery have reached for distribution offences, which require the material to spread before anything is prosecutable. Singapore is criminalising production itself, and attaching mandatory custody where the subject is a young child. That is a materially different threshold, and one that model providers serving Singapore now have to reason about.