'A global problem': US teen fights deepfake porn targeting schoolgirls
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Deepfake pornography of famous women like Taylor Swift has sparked outrage and calls for the regulation of artificial intelligence. Yet this powerful technology is not only being used to bully women in the public eye – minors are also being victimised. Schoolgirls are finding themselves targeted by AI-generated deepfake porn made by their own classmates using new, easy-to-access "nudifying" apps. And no federal laws exist to stop it.
Francesca Mani was summoned to the vice-principal’s office at Westfield High School in suburban New Jersey last autumn, where she was told that she was a “confirmed AI victim”.
Mani, then 14, was informed that she was among a group of schoolgirls who had fake nude images made of them using artificial intelligence. Boys at Westfield High shared the fake images via Snapchat.
“I was in shock,” Francesca said. “I started to feel a little sad but I went outside in the hallway and I saw a group of boys mocking a group of girls. They were laughing about it. And then I was just super mad.”
It was at that moment that Francesca, a junior Olympic fencing star, decided to fight back.
The fake images had been shared during school lunch breaks and on the school bus, according to police reports. But what the boys had done was not illegal – there are no federal laws against AI-generated deepfakes in the United States.
When Francesca told her mother, Dorota, what had happened she was furious.
“Since the beginning of time, women have to fight for our rights and consent,” said Dorota, a Polish immigrant with a black belt in jujitsu. “It’s the biggest issue here: Consent.”
The boy who made the images was suspended from school for two days but there was no further accountability.
A gentle slap on the wrist does nothing to make girls feel any safer or even valued by the school admin. The principal should be fired!
Francesca chose not to look at the images. But she felt uncomfortable knowing that the boy who made them – and the others who had shared them – were in her classes.
Some US state laws ban non-consensual deepfake pornography, including in Texas, Minnesota, Virginia, New York, Hawaii and Georgia. But that has not prevented the proliferation of of AI-generated nude images at high schools in New Jersey, California or Florida.
Cases like the one at Westfield High underscore the need for the law to catch up with this fast-paced technology. Francesca and her mother contacted local lawmakers and got to work lobbying for both state and federal legislation to make the non-consensual sharing of digitally altered pornographic images a crime.
Dorota and Francesca have made frequent trips to Washington, DC, over the past three months to lobby for a bipartisan bill, called the DEFIANCE act, that would make sharing sexually explicit deepfakes a crime and allow victims to sue those who create and distribute them.
A bill that would establish criminal penalties is now making its way through the New Jersey legislature, in part thanks to their efforts.
Both sides of the political spectrum in the US appear to agree that more should be done protect people, particularly minors, from the proliferation of deepfake porn.
Lawmakers are also examining how to hold the tech firms hosting these apps and websites accountable.
“This issue is broader than teenagers and high schools,” Dorota explained on a recent visit to the White House. “We talk about predators and pedophiles, who are using it to hurt others. I think laws and legislation – it’s so crucial.”
Another teen victim from Westfield High School, who wishes to remain anonymous, has taken direct legal action against a classmate. Her lawsuit, filed in February, alleges that she suffered substantial emotional distress and damage to her reputation, demanding financial compensation.
The lawsuit names the app used to make the images: Clothoff. The app, which is easy to access and inexpensive, claims it can remove clothes from any photo. Its secretive founders are thought to be based in Belarus.
Deepfake porn ‘exclusively targets women’
In 2023, the total number of deepfake videos online was 95,820, representing a 550% increase over 2019, according to a report by Home Security Heroes, a group that researches online security. Deepfake pornography made up 98% of those online videos. The study also found that 99% of the individuals targeted in deepfake pornography are women.
Disinformation expert Nina Jankowicz at a conference at Columbia University, in New York City
“It’s a phenomenon that almost exclusively targets women,” former Joe Biden administration official Nina Jankowicz told a conference at Columbia University on March 4.
Jankowicz is an expert on disinformation and the online harassment of women. She became a victim of deepfake pornography herself and only realised it when she received a Google alert linking to explicit videos featuring someone who looked like her. Deepfake videos had been made from her official portrait, taken while she was pregnant. The image was picked up by right-wing media, angry about her role tackling disinformation in the Biden administration, and online trolls had turned it into pornography.
Even right-wingers can be creeps, although I am positive the majority are left-leaning, godless men.
“It looks like me a little bit but it doesn’t really, again, because it’s trained on this very specific portrait of me and I can tell that it’s trained on that," Jankowicz said, indicating the graphic videos on her laptop. "But no, I didn’t watch the whole thing. They’re each about seven minutes long – that’s a lot to subject yourself to."
Disinformation expert Nina Jankowicz showing deepfake porn videos featuring her likeness
She said part of the reason these deepfakes are proliferating so quickly is that the apps used to make them are now so easily available. "This technology has become entirely democratised now, and it's being deployed not only against celebrities, like Taylor Swift or public figures like me. It's being deployed against ordinary people – mums, young women in middle and high school whose classmates are making these images of them. Nudifying apps all need to be taken off app stores and marketplaces and things like that."
Global rise of deepfake porn
The United Nations has been looking into how to combat the global rise of this technology.
Kathryn Travers, a policy expert at UN Women, believes that education is key. “You have to teach boys how to respect women and how to be responsible online in the same way that you have to teach girls,” she says.
UN policy expert Kathryn Travers in her office at UN Women on March 7, 2024. © Fanny Chauvin
These AI images may exist in the virtual space but they have real-world impact. Girls and women experience disproportionate levels of violence online, sometimes with devastating consequences.
Of course, this contributes greatly to the "Culture of Rape" in Western universities and high schools.
“They may be in a position in which they have less knowledge about their rights, about who to report to. Many often blame themselves – because of the technology the potential for piling on, sharing and resharing their images, the impact on mental health is enormous and has resulted in death by suicide by a number of girls."
Parents of children targeted by deepfake porn from across the world have now contacted Dorota for advice. "I've been talking to parents and victims from all over the United States – Texas, Wisconsin, California. Recently someone from Greece contacted me and before that Japan, London, Paris, Australia and Canada. It's a global problem."
Video report by Jessica Le Masurier, Fanny Chauvin, Sonia Dridi and Marine Pradel.
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Sweden votes on controversial gender reassignment law
UPDATE > The law passed with 234 votes in favour
and 94 against in Sweden's parliament
Sweden was the first country to introduce legal gender reassignment in 1972, but a proposal to lower the minimum age from 18 to 16 to be voted on by parliament Wednesday has sparked controversy.
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The debate has also weakened conservative Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson's standing, after he admitted to caving into pressure from party members on the issue.
Beyond lowering the age, the proposals also aim to make it simpler for a person to change their legal gender.
"The process today is very long, it can take up to seven years to change your legal gender in Sweden," Peter Sidlund Ponkala, president of the Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex Rights (RFSL), told AFP.
Under the proposal, two new laws would replace the current legislation: one regulating surgical procedures to change gender, and one regulating the administrative procedure to change legal gender in the official register.
If parliament adopts the bill as expected on Wednesday, people will be able to change their legal gender starting at the age of 16, though those under 18 will need the approval of their parents, a doctor, and the National Board of Health and Welfare.
A diagnosis of "gender dysphoria" -- where a person may experience distress as a result of a mismatch between their biological sex and the gender they identify as -- will no longer be required.
Seriously?
Surgical procedures to transition would, like now, be allowed from the age of 18, but would no longer require the Board of Health and Welfare's approval.
The removal of ovaries or testes would however only be allowed from the age of 23, unchanged from today.
Gender dysphoria surging
A number of European countries have already passed laws making it easier for people to change their legal gender.
How can something that is based on feelings have legal standing? It's madness!
Citing a need for caution, Swedish authorities decided in 2022 to halt hormone therapy for minors except in very rare cases, and ruled that mastectomies for teenage girls wanting to transition should be limited to a research setting.
Research trumps sanity and humanity?
Sweden has seen a sharp rise in gender dysphoria cases.
The trend is particularly visible among 13- to 17-year-olds born female, with an increase of 1,500 percent since 2008, according to the Board of Health and Welfare.
While tolerance for gender transitions has long been high in the progressive and liberal country, political parties across the board have been torn by internal divisions over the new proposal, and academics, health care professionals and commentators have come down on both sides of the issue.
A poll published this week suggested almost 60 percent of Swedes oppose the proposal, while only 22 percent back it.
Nevertheless, parliament passed it as though the poll was the exact opposite. Another case where the government thinks it knows better than the people.
Some critics have expressed concerns about biological males in women's locker rooms and prisons, and fear the legal change will encourage confused youths to embark down the path toward surgical transitions.
Others have insisted that more study is needed given the lack of explanation for the sharp rise in gender dysphoria.
It's been obvious for 10 years now that the explanation comes from the madness of gender fluidity being taught in schools, and the extraordinary influence of social media on young teen girls.
Deep divisions
"There is a clear correlation with different types of psychiatric conditions or diagnoses, such as autism," Annika Strandhall, head of the women's wing of the Social Democrats (S-kvinnor), told Swedish news agency TT.
17 Children from One UK School, Majority with Autism, in ‘Process of Changing Their Gender’
"We want to pause this (age change) and wait until there is further research that can explain this increase" in gender dysphoria cases.
RFSL's Ponkala disagreed, saying the simplified process was important for transgender people, a "vulnerable" group.
A vulnerable group made more vulnerable by transitioning away from their God-given, biological sex. In the UK, more than 50% of girls who transitioned to boys as teens, have attempted suicide after the transition.
Astonishing Transgender Adolescent Suicide Behavior - A National Emergency!
"They face a lot of risks... We see that the political climate has hardened," he said.
Kristersson, the prime minister, has defended the proposal as "balanced and responsible".
But he has also admitted he wanted to keep the age at 18 but gave in to strong forces in his party.
His own government has been split on the issue, with the Moderates and the Liberals largely in favour and the Christian Democrats and Sweden Democrats against.
He has had to seek support from the left-wing opposition to get the proposal through parliament.
If adopted, the new law would come into force on July 1, 2025.
(AFP)
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