The devastating trauma of having an image used in porn ‘deepfakes’

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‘Deepfakes’ are images in which someone’s face is digitally added to another person’s body. ‘Who could do this?’ asks Helen Mort My Blonde GF via BBC The director of a documentary about the impact of deepfakes on pornography said she hopes her film will help people understand the immeasurable trauma it generates. Rosie Morris’s film My Blonde GF is about what happened to writer Helen Mort when she discovered that photos of her face had appeared in deepfakes on a potion website. Deepfakes are images in which someone’s face is digitally added to another person’s body. Helen says in the documentary that she believes the images of her may have come from an old Facebook account and from professional essays that are in the public domain. In the film, she appears looking at pictures of herself between the ages of 19 and 32, smiling at weddings, family events and when she was pregnant. These are images that have been digitally edited and layered over photos of women in sexually explicit and violent scenes. Helen says she ‘can’t forget any of the images’ Tyke Films via BBC “I needed to see the pictures for myself,” she says in the documentary, speaking directly into the camera. It makes the audience feel like part of an uncomfortable conversation. “There’s a woman, she’s sitting on the edge of the bed, she has my face, but it’s not my mouth, she’s [fazendo um ato sexual]… her skin is much tanner than mine, and this woman has my exact tattoo.” “She’s looking at some text… an invitation to humiliate the person in the photo, which is me.” In the text, Helen is described as “My Blonde GF”, something like “my blonde girlfriend”, which ended up becoming the title of the documentary. ‘My film does not give notoriety to criminals’, says director Rosie Morris Tyke Films via BBC vivo’: technology exists, can be used to apply scams and is expensive; VIDEO Brazil has at least 4 lawsuits per day for recording and disclosing intimate images without consent SP and RJ Violence at a Distance Morris tells the BBC he wanted to explore the impact the images had on Helen, including recurring nightmares and paranoia. In the film, Helen says she often feels as if “the people on the street somehow know the about the photos and knew this horrible secret about me, which suddenly felt like my horrible secret”. This isn’t the first time she’s spoken out about it, and there have been other documentaries about deepfake porn — so what makes Morris’ film different? “My film doesn’t give the criminals notoriety — I’m not interested in the minds of the people who did that,” says the director. “My main goal was to have the viewer walk alongside Helen in this story.” “What impressed me when I met Helen was that it is possible to sexually assault someone without coming into physical contact with them,” she says. “That’s what motivated me.” The trauma of being used for deepfake pornography is very real. “The impact can be devastating and life-destroying,” Clare McGlynn, a professor at Durham University in the UK who specializes in image-based sexual abuse, tells the BBC. “Many victims describe a form of ‘social disruption’, in which their lives are divided between ‘before’ and ‘after’ the abuse, and the abuse affects all aspects of their lives, professional, personal, economic, their health, as well -be.” Helen says in the film that the “feel was like these were real pictures, and it’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t seen this happen with their own pictures, what it really is like — they didn’t do anything to me.” “But they planted all these things in my head, these photos, I can’t forget any of the images. I also can’t see perfectly unaltered images in the same way.” “Now I look at that picture [uma imagem dela de vestido], and if I looked at it independently, I feel like it’s a photo of an attack.” “The most disturbing aspect is that I don’t think you can separate the image from the memory very easily, like photographs. Like, if you look back, you don’t know if you remembered the moment or if you remembered the photograph of that moment.” “So, what happened to Helen is that these images, which are linked to memories, were reappropriated, and they practically planted those memories fake, called fake, in her head. And you really can’t measure that trauma.” “It’s like being psychologically attacked for that, it has to do with the emotional attachment to the original image.” A report by Fantástico showed that cases of virtual rape in Brazil have increased; WATCH: Virtual Rape, in which victims are threatened with the dissemination of intimate images, grows Erika Rackley, a professor at Kent Law School in the United Kingdom, told the BBC that she and some colleagues interviewed victims of sexual abuse based on images a few years ago. context of deepfakes that the photo ‘was still a photo of her… it’s still abuse,'” she says. A 2019 report by Sensity AI, a company that monitors deepfakes, found that 96% were non-consensual sexual images — and, of these, 99% were women. McGlynn agrees. “Women are much more likely to experience this abuse, and the perpetrators are mostly men.” “Society doesn’t have a good record of taking crimes against women seriously, and this is also the case with deepfake pornography. Online abuse is often minimized and trivialized.” Helen also speaks on My Blonde GF about the unimaginable concern of not knowing who created the images. “In each of these photos, it’s my eyes looking into the camera,” she says. “But after all, this person, this profiler, this image hoarder has no face.” She was even more horrified when she discovered that the police could do nothing to prosecute whoever had taken the images. They told her that there was nothing they could do as no crime had been committed. It is not illegal to make deepfake images. In the UK, law in Scotland already allows police to investigate, but current legislation in England and Wales, no. The Online Safety Bill, which is currently before the House of Lords, would make the non-consensual sharing of deepfake pornographic images illegal. McGlynn says “the changes included in the bill are long overdue” — but for it to be truly effective, “it needs to name online violence against women and girls as a priority issue, and include measures to ensure that internet platforms take these abuses seriously.” The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, responsible for the bill, told the BBC that it should become law this year. Morris concludes that she is “trying to ask questions” with her film. “I don’t have solutions, but I really feel like it’s something we need to pay attention to.” She also says that the importance of documentaries cannot be underestimated. “I think they open a window into other people’s lives.” “I feel like now, because of social media, we’re so wrapped up in our own experience and how we represent ourselves.” “It’s very important to think about how other people live and feel the world.”

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