Deepfakes, which employ machine learning to transform someone’s face into pornographic material without their consent, have been used to harass women for a few years now. As AI technologies progress, the quantity of nonconsensual deepfakes is increasing exponentially. A woman from the United Kingdom has come forward to explain how she discovered the person generating her deepfake pornographic images.
Jodie (name changed) revealed, in an interview with the BBC, that she received a link to a pornographic webpage through an anonymous email address. Upon browsing, she discovered graphic pictures and a video purporting to show her engaging in illicit activities. The user had requested other users to create fake pornography of her and promised to give more pictures and information about Jodie in return for the fakes.
She recalled to the news outlet, “I was screaming and crying and violently scrolling through my phone to work out what I was reading and what I was looking at. I knew that this could genuinely ruin my life.”
Jodie has been dealing with internet harassment since she was a teenager. Occasionally, someone would post her photos on explicit social media websites. Unauthorised usage of her name and images was occurring on dating apps. Jodie was also made aware by a friend of many Twitter accounts that were sharing her photos with messages that suggested she was a sex worker during the COVID-19 lockdown.
Next, she and her friend Daisy sat down and wrote down every person who could possibly be able to do the job. She blamed it on her ex-boyfriend and felt she had cracked the code. However, it was far from done when she received the anonymous email concerning deepfakes.
Jodie and Daisy had excluded a few males from their list that they absolutely trusted, including Alex Woolf, Jodie’s best friend, and members of their family. During their teenage years, Jodie and Alex became close friends due to their mutual appreciation of classical music.
Woolf went on to win BBC Young Composer of the Year in 2012, get a double first in music from Cambridge University and make an appearance on Mastermind in 2021.
Upon viewing the deepfake pornographic images, she noticed a picture of herself in a profile featuring King’s College, Cambridge, in the background. She distinctly recalled that it had been taken and that Woolf was also included in the picture. Furthermore, she had shared the photograph with no one else but him. Woolf was the one who had offered to trade more of Jodie’s original photos for deepfakes in exchange for their being shared.
26-year-old Woolf was found guilty in August 2021 of taking pictures of 15 women — among them Jodie — from social media and posting them to adult websites. He was sentenced to 20 weeks in jail, with his term suspended for two years, and he was also mandated to compensate each of his victims with £100.
Woolf told the BBC that he is “utterly ashamed” of the conduct that led to his conviction and “deeply sorry” for his actions. Woolf, however, denies any involvement in Jodie’s harassment, which occurred prior to the incidents for which he was prosecuted.
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