gErmaine Greer said women have no idea how much men hate them. His maxim takes on new relevance in light of this terrifying (and infuriating) documentary on the explosion of deepfake porn targeting women: famous women, of course, like Greta Thunberg and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who dare to surpass themselves, but also private women. women who are just trying to live their lives and have been hit with this tactic of revenge and hatred from fantasists, ex-boyfriends, future boyfriends, a range of misogynists and incels .
Deepfake porn is booming and making a lot of money for porn sites that refuse to remove these images and have no legal qualms about doing so. Last year, ASMR YouTuber Gibi Klein spoke publicly about suffering a disgusting attack. The heroine of Another Body, however, is someone else: a woman studying engineering who first alerted Gibi Klein to her situation because it had also been done to her by the same man, her face attached with a striking realism to pornographic images and using his real identity. name. She herself appears to have been informed of this by a male friend, who probably had to overcome his own embarrassment in thus admitting to his use of pornography. To protect her privacy, Another Body gives this woman the pseudonym “Taylor Klein” and actually uses a fake image of someone else’s face in interviews (I had assumed the filmmakers would use an A.I. face , but a real actor is credited).
With courage, tenacity and some digital digging, “Taylor” uncovered damning circumstantial evidence as to the identity of the culprit: incredibly, he was part of his group of friends at university. (“Taylor” is a gamer, by the way, and there is a chilling suggestion that this man’s deepfakes were revenge for losing to her, or that he had been egged on by another loser.)
This is a powerful and important documentary, although I have a small reservation. Using a deepfake face for “Taylor” is a smart idea in some ways, and more visually interesting than just putting her face in shadow. But it also undermines the primordial integrity of reality, which constitutes the moral platform of the film. Perhaps the film could have focused on Gibi, the person happy to speak out publicly. Either way, it’s exciting work.
