![]() ![]() There are myriad reasons why such abuses fall through the cracks of existing law. “Anything that might have made it possible to say this was targeted harassment meant to humiliate me, they just about avoided,” she says. The posts had also stopped a year before she learned about them. The abuser, who hadn’t created the pornographic images personally and didn’t use Mort’s real name, had walked a careful line to avoid any actions deemed illegal under UK harassment law. But gathering such evidence is often impossible, says Mania, leaving no legal remedies for the vast majority of cases. And if the victim can prove the perpetrator’s intent to harm, it’s possible to use harassment law. If a victim’s face is pulled from a copyrighted photo, it’s possible to use IP law. This leaves only a smattering of existing civil and criminal laws that may apply in very specific situations. Beyond that, no other country bans fake nonconsensual porn at a national level, says Karolina Mania, a legal scholar who has written about the issue. In the UK, revenge porn is banned, but the law doesn’t encompass anything that’s been faked. In the US, 46 states have some ban on revenge porn, but only Virginia’s and California’s include faked and deepfaked media. Today there are few legal options for victims of nonconsensual deepfake porn. “It’s like we’re holding our breath, and we’re just waiting for a big wave to crash.” “80% have no idea what a deepfake is” “People have had more time to learn how to use some of this technology,” she says. While she’s only come across a few cases of Photoshopped revenge porn, she knows the arrival of their deepfake equivalents will only be a matter of time. ![]() Existing abusive relationships have worsened, and digital abuse has seen an uptick as people have grown increasingly isolated and spent more time online. Mortimer says the helpline’s caseload has nearly doubled since the start of lockdown. In the context of the pandemic, this trend is even more worrying. “It’s not a big leap of the imagination to go from ‘I can put my face onto a star’s face in a clip from a film’ to ‘I can put somebody else’s face on something pornographic,’” says Sophie Mortimer, who manages the UK nonprofit Revenge Porn Helpline. "What a perfect tool for somebody seeking to exert power and control over a victim." Adam DodgeĪdvocates also worry about popular deepfake apps that are made for seemingly harmless purposes like face-swapping. In the case of the Telegram bot, Sensity found there had been at least 100,000 victims, including underage girls. The underlying code for “stripping” the clothes off photos of women continues to exist in open-source repositories.Īs a result, the scope of the abuse has grown: now targets are not just celebrities and Instagram influencers but private individuals, says Giorgio Patrini, Sensity’s CEO and chief scientist. ![]() Apps for this express purpose have emerged repeatedly even though they have quickly been banned: there was DeepNude in 2019, for example, and a Telegram bot in 2020. It’s become far too easy to make deepfake nudes of any woman. ![]() “What a perfect tool for somebody seeking to exert power and control over a victim,” says Dodge. But for advocates who work closely with domestic violence victims, the development was immediate cause for alarm. After all, fake celebrity porn had been around the internet for years. While the issue gained some public attention, it was mostly for the technology’s novelty. ![]()
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