WARNING: This story contains details of violence and sexual exploitation, including rape
Multiple women across Canada say they feel confused, violated and terrified after learning pictures of themselves were allegedly taken from their social media profiles and manipulated using artificial intelligence to generate realistic photos and videos of them engaged in violent scenes and sexual acts.
“It was disgusting to see that like an innocent photo of myself, he had turned to something so vile,” said one woman, whom CBC News is identifying only as C.M. because she fears for her physical safety.
The Ottawa Police Service has charged two men following a multi-jurisdictional investigation that focused on criminal harassment and the online exploitation of women, including the alleged misuse of “emerging technologies” to create and distribute harmful sexual content without consent – including, but not limited to, AI-generated nude deepfakes.
Documents currently before the court identify up to 25 alleged victims. While Canada has no law specific to deepfakes, this case comes as a bill that would criminalize such images winds its way through Parliament.
Stephen Lowe, 60, of Maitland, N.S., is facing 79 charges including:
Police say Gregry Van Beek (who goes by Peter Van Beek, according to his lawyer), 38, of West Nipissing, Ont. is charged with:
These allegations have not been proven in court. Lawyers for both accused declined to comment.
CBC News has spoken to 10 women, ranging in age from 24 to 64, who say their images have been identified by police in connection to this case. They describe anxiety being out in public, panic attacks at the thought of being photographed and constantly wondering about what else might be out there.
24-year-old describes anxiety, fear after learning about deepfake images
In a statement to CBC News, the Ottawa Police Service says its investigation began after receiving a report of a woman depicted in harmful online content. A spokesperson said investigators soon discovered there was more than one possible victim and that the impact crossed jurisdictional boundaries.
The women CBC spoke to live in three jurisdictions – Ontario, Nova Scotia and Nunavut, all places Lowe has lived. Not all of them are currently identified as victims in the Ottawa court case.
The RCMP in Nunavut emailed the women affected in the territory to tell them their cases are in the process of being transferred to Ottawa. Meanwhile, an RCMP officer in Nova Scotia emailed the women in that province to say their cases would likely be handled locally. Police in Nova Scotia have not laid charges in connection to this case.
The women who spoke to CBC News describe violent and graphic imagery that includes their real faces in AI-generated scenes, including rape, torture, bondage, and kidnapping. Some of them said they were made naked in the images, including when they were minors. Most of them have viewed entire folders, publicly available, dedicated to themselves including names they said are eerily similar to their real names.
CBC News has viewed some of the content. Many of the photos include women who are tied up and gagged, and include text over the photos such as, “Keep calm and rape them.” Some of the images are captioned with codes some of the women said police have told them include area codes, which could identify where they live.
The charges currently before the courts for Lowe pertain to the time frame between Aug. 1, 2020 and Dec. 30, 2025, but some of the women said they found photos of themselves that were posted many years prior. Van Beek’s charges date back to 2016.
Emails show the RCMP has told the women all known profiles used to distribute their images have been removed, and that one of the main websites hosting the content had been taken offline entirely. CBC News is not naming the website to prevent further harm.
CBC News has confirmed the website is back online, with a message to users that it has strengthened its moderation systems to “more effectively detect, prevent and promptly enforce against illegal content.”
Most of the women who spoke with CBC News said they knew Lowe in some capacity, but to extremely varying degrees, from a mere acquaintance to very close relationships. If Lowe is responsible for the postings, they all believe he obtained their photos from their social media accounts.
One woman, whom CBC News is identifying only as M, because she is an identified victim in the Ottawa case and a publication ban protects her identity, said Lowe was part of her life for more than 25 years.
If the allegations are true, she said this behaviour couldn’t be further from the man she thought she knew.
“The gentlest and kindest person that I would have trusted with absolutely anything,” she said during an interview in her home in Ontario.
“The layers of the person that this man showed to the world versus what he was doing, I don’t know if I’ll ever in my lifetime be able to process that.”
In his online public profiles, Lowe described himself as an aspiring author with a background in marketing and communications, who loves Dungeons and Dragons. Another profile with an anonymous username the women say belongs to Lowe says: “Stalking, home invasion, bondage, abduction, kidnapping and rape are my jam.” CBC News has not been able to independently confirm this profile belongs to Lowe.
In a statement to CBC News, Lowe’s wife of 20 years, Gwen Frankton, said when police came to her door to arrest her husband, she had no idea of the circumstances that had brought them there.
In fact she was sure there’d been a mistake, and that the “friendly, kind and community-focused man,” she’d married would return home to continue life as normal. She is now in the process of filing for divorce.
“I can say unequivocally that my heart is forever broken for the women impacted by these charges. The violation of trust, privacy, and autonomy is staggering and, regardless of the outcome, has forever changed the lives of everyone involved, me included,” Frankton wrote.
Ottawa Police say Lowe was arrested on Feb. 12 by the RCMP in Nova Scotia. He arrived in the custody of the Ottawa Police Service five days later. It would be another two and a half months before Van Beek was arrested. Both accused remain in custody.
One woman, who is identified in the current court documents as K.S., said in an interview that she got a call from a police officer in March informing her about the photos. Then in early May she got another call informing her she had also been the victim of stalking.
She said the officer told her police believed Lowe had obtained her address through a photo of an Amazon delivery confirmation posted online and shared it with Van Beek, who in turn, police told her, showed up at her house. She was not aware until police informed her. CBC has not been able to verify whether this is the basis of the charges.
“I was really disturbed,” she said. “It was very sobering.”
The women said they are worried about what else might have happened or might still happen that they are unaware of. They’re concerned others may have downloaded or screencaptured their images, and worry their addresses might have been shared.
“I don’t know if we’re ever going to know that or not and that’s, that’s one of the worst parts of this,” said M.
C.M. who said she found dozens of photos of herself with thousands of views and comments, explained how difficult it is to take public transportation at night now.
“Anxiety is filling up. Like, am I going to get raped right now if I get off this bus?”
Another woman, T.E., described being in a restaurant and having a panic attack after thinking she may have been caught in the background of two people taking a selfie.
T.T., who lives in Nunavut, talked about the long-term nature of the impact.
“This is never going to go away,” she said. “I’m always going to worry about my body being exploited and shared.”
T.T., along with other alleged victims, Lowe’s wife and experts, are calling on the federal government to strengthen Canada’s laws around the creation of this kind of content.
It has been illegal to share intimate images without consent in Canada since 2014, but experts say there is a gap in the law such that it doesn’t include deepfakes.
Canada’s justice minister spoke out about the matter after a Halifax man accused of creating deepfakes of women he knew was acquitted in March. In her decision, Justice Bronwyn Duffy of the N.S. provincial court wrote: “The law does not reflect the technology that exists today.”
In December, Minister Sean Fraser introduced the Protecting Victims Act, known as Bill C-16, sweeping new legislation the Liberals say will plug the loophole in the intimate images law by including sexual deepfakes.
The bill is expected to go back to the House for third reading next week.
Suzie Dunn, director of the law and technology institute at Dalhousie University and an expert in technology-facilitated violence with a focus on intimate images, says she and others have been calling for legal responses to deepfakes for nearly a decade and that Canada is “far behind.”
Dunn applauds Bill C-16 but says more is necessary and victims are also looking for ways to get content removed quickly.
She points to Australia, which criminalized deepfakes in 2024, as a leader in this area.
Dunn says for now, police officers in Canada are “having to be creative” when it comes to the charges they can lay for crimes involving deepfakes.
“Why the heck are we not pushing this forward in real time?” said T.T.
“Whether you are a woman or a man you have people in your life that you would be devastated to hear that this happened to,” said K.S.
For support in your area, you can look for crisis lines and local services via the Ending Sexual Violence Association of Canada database.
