There are many unpleasant things one might stumble across while scrolling through Twitter of an evening — political opinions, someone’s unsolicited thoughts on pineapple pizza, the slow collapse of Western civilisation. But Kate Isaacs, campaigner against non-consensual pornography, discovered something considerably worse: a deepfake porn nightmare in which artificial intelligence had cheerfully pasted her face onto someone else’s body in an adult video and tagged her in the tweet for good measure. Because nothing says ‘we’ve gone too far as a species’ quite like that.
AI: Solving Problems Nobody Had, Creating Ones Nobody Wanted
Deepfake technology, for those blissfully unfamiliar, uses artificial intelligence to digitally transplant one person’s face onto another person’s body with increasingly horrifying realism. Originally, the tech promised wonders — digital de-ageing in films, harmless political satire, making Nicolas Cage appear in every movie ever made. Splendid. However, as is tradition with any technology humanity gets its hands on, someone immediately weaponised it for the absolute worst possible purpose. According to cybersecurity firm Recorded Future, a staggering 96% of all deepfakes online are non-consensual pornography. Ninety-six percent. The other four percent is presumably Nicolas Cage.
Kate had been publicly campaigning against this very type of abuse when the video appeared, which is either darkly ironic or spectacularly stupid on the perpetrator’s part — possibly both. Furthermore, the footage used to create the deepfake had been lifted directly from television interviews she’d given while campaigning. Someone essentially watched her speak passionately about the harm of image-based sexual abuse and thought, ‘Yes, I’ll have some of that.’ Remarkable, truly.
The Deepfake Porn Nightmare Arrives With a Notification Ping
Kate describes the moment of discovery with the kind of quiet horror usually reserved for finding a spider in your shoe or accidentally opening your bank statement after Christmas. ‘This panic just washed over me,’ she says. Her heart sank. She couldn’t think clearly. Which is, frankly, a perfectly reasonable response when artificial intelligence has decided to cast you in a film you absolutely did not audition for. Meanwhile, the video sat there on Twitter — tagged at her, like some grotesque gift — threatening to spread across the internet at the speed that only truly awful things seem to manage.
Image-based sexual abuse, the umbrella term covering this sort of digital villainy, is recognised by charities like Refuge as a serious form of gendered violence. Consequently, campaigners have been pushing for stronger legislation for years, with the argument that existing laws were written in an era when the worst thing technology could do to you was lose your Word document. The law, as it so often does, has been sprinting to catch up while wearing Wellington boots.
When the Internet Becomes a Very Grim Place Indeed
In the not-so-distant past, deepfakes were mostly a celebrity problem — politicians rendered saying things they didn’t say, actors inserted into scenes they’d never filmed. Uncomfortable, certainly, but largely confined to the famous. Now, however, the technology has become accessible enough that absolutely anyone can be targeted. Apps and websites exist specifically to generate this material, often requiring nothing more than a handful of photographs. Your LinkedIn headshot. Your Instagram. That photo your mum put on Facebook of you at Christmas looking slightly dazed by Prosecco. All potential raw material. Marvellous.
The End Violence Against Women coalition and similar organisations have long argued that without explicit criminalisation of deepfake pornography, platforms and perpetrators face precious little accountability. England and Wales have since moved toward closing legislative gaps, though campaigners note that enforcement remains about as robust as a wet paper bag in a storm. Furthermore, by the time content is removed from one platform, it has typically colonised seventeen others. The internet: efficient only when you’d really rather it wasn’t.
A Deepfake Porn Nightmare That Demands a Proper Response
Kate’s experience — harrowing, infuriating, and unfortunately far from unique — has become emblematic of a broader crisis in how society handles technology that outpaces decency. She has continued campaigning, which, given the circumstances, demonstrates a level of resolve that most of us could only dream of while hiding under a duvet. If you or someone you know has been affected by image-based abuse, the Revenge Porn Helpline offers practical support and is staffed by actual humans rather than the AI causing all the trouble. The deepfake porn nightmare is real, it is growing, and it is — to use the technical term — an absolute disgrace.
Read the original story at BBC News – Magazine (Odd).
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