In the past, high-profile celebrities and politicians were the most common targets of deepfakes – the videos weren’t always porn, some were made for comedic value. But over the years that’s changed – according to cybersecurity company Deeptrace, 96% of all deepfakes are non-consensual porn.
Like revenge porn, deepfake pornography is what’s known as image-based sexual abuse – an umbrella term which encompasses the taking, making and/or sharing of intimate images without consent.
It is already an offence in Scotland to share images or videos that show another person in an intimate situation without their consent. But in other parts of the UK, it’s only an offence if it can be proved that such actions were intended to cause the victim distress – a loophole which means video creators often don’t face legal consequences.
Government plans for a long-awaited UK-wide Online Safety Bill have been under endless revision and repeatedly shelved. The new laws would give the regulator, Ofcom, the power to take action against any website deemed to be enabling harm to UK users, no matter where they are based in the world. Earlier this month, however, Culture Secretary Michelle Donelan said, external she and her team were now “working flat out” to ensure the bill was delivered.
Kate, 30, founded the #NotYourPorn campaign in 2019. A year later, her activism contributed to the adult entertainment website, Pornhub, having to take down all videos uploaded to the site by unverified users – the majority of its content.
Kate therefore assumed that whoever was behind the deepfake of her had been annoyed by her campaigning. She had “taken away their porn”.
But she had no idea who that person was, or who might have seen the video. And while she could see that her face had been overlaid onto footage of a porn actor, the video was convincing enough that she worried others might not spot the deception.
“It was a violation – my identity was used in a way I didn’t consent to.”
Underneath the video, people began leaving streams of abusive comments, saying they were going to follow Kate home, rape her, film the attack, and publish the footage on the internet.
“You start thinking about your family,” she says, holding back tears. “How would they feel if they saw this content?”
The threat intensified when both Kate’s home and work addresses were published below the video – a practice known as doxing.
“I became completely paranoid – ‘Who knows my address? Is it someone I know that’s done this?’
“I was thinking, ‘I’m really in trouble here, this isn’t just some people on the internet mouthing off, there’s actually a real danger.'”
From her experience supporting others in similar situations, Kate knew exactly what to do if someone becomes a victim – but in that moment she froze.
“I didn’t follow any of my own advice,” she says. “Kate the campaigner was very strong and didn’t show any vulnerability – and then there was me, Kate, who was really scared.”
A colleague reported the video, vicious comments and doxing to Twitter, and they were all taken down from the platform. But once any deepfake has been published and shared online it’s difficult to remove it from circulation entirely.
“I just wanted that video off the internet,” Kate says, “but there was nothing I could do about it.”
There’s a marketplace for deepfakes in online forums. People post requests for videos to be made of their wives, neighbours and co-workers and – unfathomable as it might seem – even their mothers, daughters and cousins.
Content creators respond with step-by-step instructions – what source material they’ll need, advice on which filming angles work best, and price tags for the work.
A deepfake content creator based in south-east England, Gorkem, spoke to the BBC anonymously. He began creating celebrity deepfakes for his own gratification – he says they allow people to “realise their fantasies in ways that really wasn’t [sic] possible before”.
Later, Gorkem moved on to deepfaking women he was attracted to, including colleagues at his day job who he barely knew.
