"They Put My Face On A Porn Video," says #NotYourPorn advocate Kate Isaacs
Kate Isaacs, founder of the campaign group Not Your Porn, had been tagged in a deepfake video posted to Twitter. The video was created using clips from television appearances she had given while advocating for her cause. This depiction of her seemed to portray her engaging in sexual activity.
Kate, who is finally discussing the incident said, "Someone had taken my face, put it on to a porn video, and made it look like it was me."
"My heart sank. I couldn't think clearly," she explaineda, "I remember just feeling like this video was going to go everywhere - it was horrendous."
Deepfakes have historically targeted prominent public figures, such as celebrities and politicians; these videos were not always pornographic but might also serve as comic parodies.
This has evolved over time, and now 96 per cent of all deepfakes are non-consensual porn, according to cybersecurity firm Deeptrace.
Image-based sexual abuse, which includes both deepfake porn and revenge porn, refers to the taking, creating, and/or sharing of personal images without the subject's consent.
It is already illegal in Scotland to distribute photos or recordings of another person without their consent that depict them in a sexually explicit context. In other regions of the United Kingdom, authors of such videos rarely face legal consequences because it is only an offense if it can be proven that such actions were intended to cause the victim pain.
The long-awaited Online Safety Bill for the United Kingdom has been the subject of constant amendment and postponement by the government. Under the proposed legislation, Ofcom would be able to take legal action against any website, regardless of location, that it determines is facilitating harm to users in the United Kingdom.
However, Culture Secretary Michelle Donelan stated earlier last month that she and her staff were now "working flat out" to deliver the bill.
Thirty-year-old Kate started the #NotYourPorn movement in 2019. One year later, because of her advocacy, the adult entertainment website Pornhub removed all films posted by unverified users, which made up the vast majority of the site's material.
For this reason, Kate concluded that whoever created the deepfake of her must have been irritated by her campaigns. For she had "taken away their porn."
However, she had no idea who it was or if they shared the footage with anybody else. She knew that her face had been superimposed onto pornographic actor footage, but she was concerned that viewers wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
Kate's home and workplace addresses were published underneath the video, increasing the level of danger she was in, a tactic called doxxing.
The video, along with the hateful comments and doxxing, were removed from Twitter after a coworker reported them. However, once a deepfake has been published and circulated online, it is very difficult to stop it from spreading further.
Deepfakes can be bought and sold on online forums. Strange as it may seem, people ask for movies to be shot of their wives, neighbors, coworkers, and even their own moms, daughters, and cousins.
Creators of content provide detailed responses, including a list of the resources they will require, suggestions for the optimal camera angles, and estimated costs.
Ms Isaac's health and her capacity to trust others suffered as a result of being deepfaked and doxed. She temporarily stopped campaigning because she wasn't sure she could keep talking about how she felt as a woman in the world.
Nonetheless, this has just served to invigorate her further. She realized that she cared too much to just abandon the situation.
"I'm not letting them win."
She warns that deepfakes can be used to subjugate women, and that developers of face-swapping applications and other software should be urged to implement safeguards.