One More Edit Online
Now politics isn't the only aspect of society being affected by the idea of deep fakes. Deep fakes are a global issue that affect thousands upon thousands of individuals all over the world, especially women. With deep fake technology, creators are able to take images of women and manipulate their faces onto another woman's body involved in sexual activity. This content is called image-based sexual abuse. Achieving justice is close to impossible when it comes to this issue, but individuals have brought it upon themselves to step out and bring awareness on this issue.
Noelle Martin
Noelle Martin, an activist and law reformer from Australia, has had a horrific battle with deep fakes for more than five years now, almost ruining her life. As Noelle Google reverse searched herself, her screen was flooded with dozens of her images that had been stolen off her social media accounts. Nameless, faceless sexual predators, posted highly explicit sexual commentary about her pictures, commenting things like “Cover her face, and we would **** her body.” What was even worse? She found that these sexual predators had doctored her face from these images onto the bodies of naked adult actresses engaged in sexual intercourse. Thousands of graphic content and videos were being uploaded of her performing sexual intercourse with men she’s never even seen before. Her face was being uploaded on every sexual website as well as porn DVD covers. Images of Noelle fully clothed was also photoshopped to appear transparent in all of her photos. The content posted was so “confronting and graphic,” an experience no one should have to deal with. Noelle spoke out about her experience with revenge porn wanting everyone to learn that “What I post and what I wear isn’t an invitation to violate and abuse me.” She reached out for help from the police but was only told to contact these creators, one by one, notifying the webmasters to get everything deleted. There were no laws against this activity.
Noelle Martin came out to do a TEDx Talk on her experience with deep fake photo manipulation |
The more she fought, the more sites she discovered, and with time, the more her images were being seen and shared in the tens of thousands. As she tried contacting these webmasters, one even said he’d only delete the site if she sent him nude photos of herself within the next 24 hours. Noelle had enough. She thought, “Maybe, if I spoke out, I could reclaim my name, and I could rewrite my narrative on my own terms. Maybe, if I spoke out, I could raise awareness about this. Maybe, I could even try to change the law. And so I did”. As her story got shared, Noelle was referred to the New South Wales Attorney General’s Department who were already in the process of drafting new laws to criminalize the non-consensual distribution of intimate images, image-based sexual abuse, and revenge porn. New South Wales, of all the world, became the first state ever to specifically include a provision on altering images. This, however, doesn’t change the outcome of what victims had to suffer through, in fact, more than half the world still hasn’t fought against it.
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Gia Lim
On a similar note, Gia Lim, a student from Singapore, is another victim who also experienced the distribution of edited non-consensual intimate images. While in the middle of her O levels, Gia suddenly started receiving many "friend" request from strangers as well as unsocialized sexual messages on her social media platforms. It was later discovered that all her information and images had been uploaded to porn websites where they were edited onto sexually explicit photos. These predators took innocuous pictures of Gia, along with along with other young women, and created disturbing sexual content followed by lewd captions. After three years, Gia finally spoke out about the embarrassing and distressing content after facing insecurity, self- blame, paranoia, and anxiety after the incident. "If you fall silent, and you don't talk about it, nobody will understand how you feel," she said. Criminal lawyer Rajan Supramaniam had also come out to mention cases like this. He said that cases involving non-consensual use of sexual images and videos online have been on the rise. Rajan mentioned that "This is due to the rapid growth of information technology and the popularity of social media platforms," showing us just how dangerous our rising technology can be.
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Raquel Roper
Raquel Roper, an adult content video creator, is another victim who experienced deep fakes in a significantly different way. As she was watching another YouTuber, Shane Dawson, address the topic of deep fakes, she was nearing the end of the video where she saw a video of her content being played. However, instead of her original face, she realized that the face of a popular singer/ songwriter in the music industry, Selena Gomez, had had her face edited onto Raquel’s content. Instead of her face being doctored onto another individuals body, another’s face was doctored onto her body. The watermark from her original video and been completed removed but her voice was still there. As Raquel continues watching the video, she mentioned that “It just looked so realistic and real.” Raquel believes that for her content to be used this way was just “very disheartening” to say the least. The material was being pirated from her when it was her source of income. “It’s not even the content, it’s my identity” Raquel adds on. Explaining the misuse of her content, she brings up that she didn’t give consent for the video to be used, neither did Selena Gomez intend to have herself revealed like that on the internet. Victims all over the adult industry are being affected by this photo-manipulative technology, proving that not only the victims whose faces have been doctored are affected.
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Deep Fake Creators
Too many women who are being prayed upon in this mass-scale horrific online cultured websites and threads that are dedicated to sexually exploiting and doctoring ordinary images of women into porn. Just how and why are these sexual predators editing such pictures and videos on the internet? Wall Street Journal Senior Correspondent, Jason Bellini, was able to get in touch with one of these anonymous non-consensual deep fake creators. His reason as to create these images and videos is “To please the community…” as he’s actually “ taking requests of them and creating them.” As he’s asked to put himself in a victim’s shoe, he responds, “I think that this content, people are going to make it regardless.” Another deep fake creator wrote in a message to CBS news that he creates this content for “fun” and though he sees the potential threat for fake news, he adds “People will have to adapt as the tech is here to stay.” Even though these content producers are aware of the damage they are creating, they continue to pursue this career without worrying about the detrimental consequences.
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