Adult Performers Call Deepfake Porn ‘Objectifying,’ Reports Wired

The potential impact of “deepfake” videos on the upcoming presidential election, and the possible use of the AI-generated deceptive videos in all varieties of political propaganda, has caused such a wave of panic that Congress allocated $5 million in cash to develop deepfake-detecting technology. A recent study reported by AVN.com, however, found that of 15,000 deepfake videos identified online, all but four percent were simply porn—not political “fake news.” While the use of celebrity images in deepfakes has raised alarm—as has the appearance of private individuals in deepfake “revenge porn,” on Tuesday, Wired Magazine highlighted the victims of deepfake porn who are rarely discussed in the media reports on the disturbing phenomenon—porn performers themselves. Most deepfake porn videos use artificial intelligence to superimpose the face of an otherwise uninvolved person onto the body of porn performer, in an existing hardcore clip. The increasingly sophisticated technology can create the near-seamless appearance that the person whose face is being used—most often without consent—is actually performing in the “sex tape.” But as Wired writer Lux Alptraum found in interviews with porn performers, they too say they have been harmed by deepfake videos and images. Performer Ela Darling told Wired that appearing in deepfake videos is “more objectifying than any of the made up reasons why people who hate porn think it’s objectifying.”  “That would literally make me into a tool they’re using to harm someone else,” she said. “I’d feel eviscerated.”  Performer Sydney Leathers says that though she is not aware of deepfake videos using her image, a racy selfie she once posted was distributed online as an image of Congressional rep Alexandria Octavio-Cortez, an experience that she found “a little violating.” “You don’t want to feel like you’re a part of [the harassment of other women],” Leathers told Alptraum. “Instead of merely worrying that your own image will be distributed in a way that feels off-brand or even offensive, performers must now consider the possibility that their bodies will be cut up into parts and reassembled, Frankenstein-style, into a video intended to harass and humiliate someone who never consented to be sexualized in this manner,” Alptraum writes in the Wired article. Photo By Abyssus / Wikimedia Commons