Imagine you’re scrolling through a porn site (hey, we’re all adults here), and you come across a video that isn’t quite what you had in mind. Perhaps the video is extremely violent. Or—brace yourself—the woman in it has your face—and you never consented to a starring role.
Deepfake pornography is growing at an alarming rate, and concerns about it hit a fever pitch last week when Taylor Swift became the latest high-profile target. Pornographic deepfake images of the mega-star were circulated on various social media platforms, including X (Twitter) and Meta. Not only were the images themselves made without the singer’s consent, but they also reportedly depicted her being assaulted in nonconsensual sexual acts.
According to NBC News, the deepfakes of Swift on X amassed over 27 million views and more than 260,000 likes in 19 hours before the account that initially posted the images was suspended. X has since blocked searches for “Taylor Swift” on the site. Joe Benarroch, head of business operations at X, described the measure as “temporary,” adding that it was done with “an abundance of caution as we prioritize safety on this issue.”
A spokesperson for Meta has said: “This content violates our policies, and we’re removing it from our platforms and taking action against accounts that posted it. We’re continuing to monitor, and if we identify any additional violating content, we’ll remove it and take appropriate action.”
Swift is understood to be considering legal action against the deepfake website that hosted the images. However, many victims of deepfake pornography simply don’t have the profile or resources to pursue justice in this manner.
At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Helen Mort, a poet and lecturer from Sheffield, England, discovered that deepfaked pornographic images of her were circulating on a porn site. “It was profoundly unsettling and disturbing,” she tells Glamour. “I felt unsafe.”
While those doctored images were deleted soon after she became aware of them, the deepfakes of Taylor Swift reminded her of the ordeal. “It brought back memories of my own experience,” Mort says. “I started thinking about the abusive images all over again in excruciating detail.”
She notes that nonconsensual deepfake pornography is “probably shockingly common.” Indeed, a January policy briefing by Equality Now on image-based sexual abuse notes that “vulnerable groups, particularly women and girls, face amplified risks and unique challenges in combatting deepfake image-based sexual abuse.”
Deepfake technology is clearly spinning out of control, and—surprise, surprise—it’s women and girls who are bearing the brunt of it. Here, Glamour explores the inherent misogyny within deepfake porn, the dangers it poses to all women, and whether or not it can be stopped.
What are deepfakes?
The Alliance for Universal Digital Rights defines deepfakes as: “Synthetic media that have been digitally manipulated to replace one person’s likeness convincingly with that of another. Creating deepfakes involves collecting real, everyday images of someone and manipulating them so as to create a false depiction of them doing or saying something which they have not done.”
There are myriad issues surrounding deepfakes, but by far the most pressing is the use of this technology to create nonconsensual pornographic materials. It is inherently misogynistic: a comprehensive report into deepfakes in 2023 determined that deepfake pornography constitutes 98% of all deepfake videos found online. Worse still, 99% of those targeted by deepfake pornography are women.
“Deepfake sexual abuse is commonly about trying to silence women who speak out,” says Clare McGlynn, a leading authority on deepfake laws and professor of law at Durham University in the UK. “We see this with Taylor Swift. We see this with women politicians, where deepfake porn is an attempt to intimidate them. We see it with many women in the public eye.”
Amanda Manyame, Equality Now’s digital rights advisor, who works at the intersection between tech and the law, agrees that women in the public eye are at a particular risk of deepfake abuse. She tells Glamour, “Anyone can be a victim of deepfake imaged-based sexual abuse, but women in the public eye and positions of authority—such as celebrities, politicians, journalists, and human rights defenders—are particularly targeted.”
But seeing high-profile women victimized in this way also has a profound impact on regular women and girls. When Ellie Wilson, an advocate for justice reform, tweeted about the troubling response to the deepfakes of Swift, she was met with her own flurry of online abuse.
“People threatened to make similar deepfake images of me,” she tells Glamour. “These attacks for merely stating my opinion highlight just how dangerous it is for women to simply exist on the internet.”
Olivia DeRamus, the founder and CEO of Communia, a social network created by and for women, notes that even speaking up against deepfaking puts other women in danger. “Just talking about [deepfaking] as a woman paints a target on my back, along with other advocates, the female journalists covering this, the #swifties speaking out, and even female politicians who want to tackle the issue.”
Professor McGlynn emphasises that deepfaking represents a threat to all women and girls, citing the “potentially devastating impact on our private and professional lives.”
It’s clear that deepfake technology is rapidly hurtling out of control. Amanda Manyame cites “rapid advances in technology and connectivity” that make it “increasingly easy and cheap to create abusive deepfake content.” She adds, “Cyberspace facilitates abuse because a perpetrator doesn’t have to be in close physical proximity to a victim.
“In addition, the anonymity provided by the internet creates the perfect environment for perpetrators to cause harm while remaining anonymous and difficult to track down.”
Moreover, most countries are ill-equipped to deal with tech-facilitated harms like deepfaked image-based abuse. In the UK, for example, it is an offense—under the Online Safety Act—to share deepfake pornographic content without consent, but the law fails to cover the creation of such images.
“This gap,” Manyame explains, “has created an enabling environment for perpetrators who know they are unlikely to be discovered or punished. The situation is worsened by the lack of legal accountability governing the tech sector, which currently does not have to ensure safety by design at the coding or creation stage.”
Meanwhile, the tech sector itself is alienating victims. As Manyame tells Glamour, “Content moderation on tech platforms relies primarily on reporting by victims, but reporting mechanisms are generally difficult to use, and many platforms frequently do not respond to requests to remove abusive content or only respond after a long time.”
What is the law on deepfakes in the United States?
There is no federal law regarding deepfakes in the US. However, 10 states have laws that targets those who create and share explicit deepfake content: California, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Minnesota, New York, South Dakota, Texas, and Virginia.
On October 30, 2023, President Biden also issued the Executive Order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence. According to whitehouse.gov, the executive order “directs the Office of Management and Budget to consider the risks of deepfake image-based sexual abuse of adults and children in their its forthcoming AI procurement guidance, and directs a report and guidelines to promote widespread adoption of industry standards to prevent AI systems from generating abuse material.”
However, nothing concrete has been done on a federal level. And ultimately, we need to address the misogynistic culture that empowers users to create harmful, nonconsensual content of women. Mort, who survived being deepfaked, asks, “What are the cultural and social factors that make people abuse images in this nonconsensual way?”
We're still looking for answers.
Glamour has reached out to representatives for Taylor Swift and X for comment.
If you have had your intimate images shared without your consent, remember that you are not alone, and there is help available. Reach out to the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative’s crisis hotline at 844-878-CCRI (2274).
For more from Lucy Morgan, follow her on Instagram @lucyalexxandra.
This post originally appeared on Glamour UK.
