Peru toughens penalties for AI deepfakes

Update September 18, 2026: Peru's criminal debate over deepfakes has shifted in scope because Law No. 32314 was enacted in 2025 and set specific penalties for using AI in these offenses. In 2026, the Public Prosecutor's Office and El Peruano also recorded a steady rise in identity theft complaints, broadening the context of the original report.

Peru enacted Law No. 32314 in April 2025, amending the Penal Code to add specific sanctions when artificial intelligence systems are used to generate, alter, or spread images or videos that harm a person's privacy or honor. The law sets prison terms of two to six years for those who use AI in these offenses.

What does the current legal framework include?

Law No. 32314 added criminal tools to punish the use of artificial intelligence in creating and distributing content that affects a person's privacy, honor, or image. It also expanded the scope to other cybercrimes and aggravating factors tied to deepfakes, fraud, and identity theft.

The official publication in the Diario Oficial El Peruano was on April 29, 2025, according to the review cited by Forseti. SciELO Venezuela says the law also amended Law 30096 on Computer Crimes, adding AI as a specific means of committing digital extortion, identity theft using AI-generated audio or video, fraud, and corporate blackmail based on deepfakes.

Another result is the general aggravating factor in Article 46 of the Penal Code. According to RecordingLaw, when an offense is committed using artificial intelligence or similar technologies, a judge may increase the sentence by up to one-third above the legal maximum for that offense.

How did deepfake defamation change?

Defamation was aggravated when committed through artificial intelligence technologies, deepfakes, or other AI-generated content that spreads false or denigrating information. The current wording of Article 132 of the Penal Code raises the penalty to one to three years in prison and fines of 120 to 365 days.

PeruDerecho.org and other legal analyses cited in the material say the law also affects defamation, fraud, identity-theft scams, production and distribution of child sexual abuse material generated with AI, and copyright violations assisted by AI. CMS, in its comparative guide on AI regulation, places that reform within a broader criminal response to deepfakes used for reputational harm, child sexual abuse, and scams.

What do the complaint figures show?

Peru's specialized cybercrime prosecutors recorded 7,431 identity theft complaints through July 2026, according to Andina and the official report published by El Peruano. The same coverage says there were three convictions for the crime against public faith linked to identity theft during that period, with 23 convictions accumulated since 2021.

Andina also published a table from the Public Prosecutor's Office case management system showing a steady annual rise in those complaints from 2021 through July 2026. For the set of crimes reported between January and July 2026, the total was 29,575 complaints.

Those figures show a problem that is already embedded in Peru's criminal agenda. The original push to punish fake sexual content created with AI now exists alongside active legislation that already treats artificial intelligence as a means of committing several cybercrimes and has hardened the response to deepfakes and identity theft.

The text that reached Congress in August 2026, backed by Marleny Bibiana Arminta Valencia and other lawmakers, followed the same line of criminal response to digital sexual violence. LP Derecho reported that the proposal called for up to four years in prison for creating, generating, or altering non-consensual sexual content that appears real, while Éxitosa Noticias described it as a measure to punish the generation and spread of fake sexual images using digital technologies.

El Comercio's coverage placed that proposal among the first bills in the new parliamentary agenda, at an early stage of the process. At that point, it was not a general cybersecurity law, but a focused criminal response to sexual content generated with digital tools.