Deepfake porn wrecks lives – but it takes just 8 seconds to make image
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Kate Isaacs flipped through her phone, opened Twitter, and saw a message that consumed her with fear.
Someone had publicly tweeted an explicit video of what looked like she was having sex.
“This panic just swept over me,” Kate said metro.co.uk. ‘I couldn’t think clearly at the time.
“Your mind goes into absolute overdrive: ‘But when was that, who am I having sex with, I don’t remember, I don’t think I agreed to this.’
“It’s really scary to watch because you’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s me, I’m in a porn video and everyone will see it — my employers, my grandmother, my friends.'”
Kate Isaacs told Metro.co.uk how ‘panic’ engulfed her when she found out she was a victim of deepfake porn
“You feel vulnerable because your body is out there, but you can’t remember being filmed at all.”
After her initial shock, Kate realized something even more disturbing – while it was her face in the video, the pinned body wasn’t hers.
The 30-year-old campaigner had become a victim of so-called deepfake pornography, the term for pornographic videos made with stolen images that are converted into pornographic images using software.
Kate, 30, believes she was targeted for her 2020 #NotYourPorn campaign, which saw the removal of 10 million consensual videos and child porn on Pornhub.
Journalist Jess Davies presents new BBC3 documentary Deepfake Porn: Could You Be Next? where she learned it only takes seconds to make a deep fake
“It’s so terrible because I expected to be the target, and before I was on TV for the first time, I searched my phone and deleted all the photos that could be used against me,” she explains.
“But I don’t think I’ve prepared for it to be made into a porn video.”
Even more shocking is that the perpetrators also ‘stunned’ Kate by posting her work and home addresses online.
She adds: “I got threats that they would follow me home in the dark and that they would rape me, film me and upload me to the internet.”
Kate shares her experience in the new BBC3 documentary Deepfake Porn: Could You Be Next?, presented by journalist Jess Davies, who takes a look at how easy it is to create this content.
In the documentary, Jess, 29, speaks with deepfake creators, “Gorkem,” who creates images and videos for clients, and “MrDeepFakes,” whose website of the same name attracts 13 million visitors each month and has nearly 250,000 members.
Gorkem says: ‘I can imagine that some women get psychological damage from this, but on the other hand they can just say: ‘It’s not me, this is fake, I can’t take any damage from this.’
“I think they should just acknowledge that and get on with their day.”
Mr Deepfakes agrees: ‘I think as long as you don’t pass it off as real it doesn’t really matter because it’s actually fake.
“I don’t really feel like permission is needed — it’s a fantasy, it’s not real.”
Deepfake victim Kate disagrees. “I don’t know what world he lives in if he’s able to create these things and think it won’t affect anyone’s reputation in any way,” she says.
As part of her research, Jess also found that readily available apps like FaceMagic — with an age rating of 12 — can create a deepfake in less than a minute. In the documentary, she makes a clip of herself in about eight seconds.
“You just upload one photo and you create a deepfake porn video in seconds,” she explains.
“They may not look the most realistic, but it’s still enough to feel the shame and humiliation.”
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