A Comment on the Reactions to Using Celebrity Likeness to Create Deep-Fake Porn
The spotlight of fame comes with a high price tag on privacy. Celebrities likely aren’t surprised when their latest tweet, or pictures of their run to the store ends up on gossip blogs. However, concerns of safety have escalated due to advancements in artificially intelligent (AI) technology that has radically changed the potential threat of their images being altered without their consent. Grammy winning artist Megan Thee Stallion and popular singer Taylor Swift have both found themselves starring in sexually explicit content they didn’t actually make or give consent for public release. As shockingly inappropriate as these videos were, the world handled these women in two drastically different ways.
Rapper and songwriter Megan Thee Stallion is currently on her Hot Girl Summer Tour with rapper GloRilla. During her recent show in Tampa, Florida, Megan began crying onstage before performing her song Cobra. Onlookers made assumptions that her tears were from the release of an embarrassing deep-fake video that she addressed in a tweet after the show. News surfaced about the release of a pornographic video starring Megan’s likeness made using AI. Countless blogs and YouTube users shared a clip of her emotional moment and directly referenced associated it with the deep-fake technology being used against her. For those unfamiliar with that term, a deep-fake is a picture or video that is created by an AI program in order to slightly or dramatically alter an image. Think along the lines of photoshop, where you can completely change a picture. There are plenty of examples of ridiculous AI-made images that are obviously distorted, but when used skillfully, this technology can flawlessly transfer an image of your face onto another person’s picture or video. It has been used in movies and other mediums since the 90s, only becoming more deceitful over its 30 years of being perfected. In this case, the offenders who created the explicit deep fake video of Megan clearly had ill-intentions by using this form of digital advancement to create fake sexual content without her consent. The video was quickly blocked on social media platforms while tons of fans encouraged her to sue whoever made the video and every page that shared it. All that motion may sound helpful, but contrastingly, this exact situation happened to Taylor Swift just a few months ago and much more was done.
Immediately, literally millions of Swifties (Taylor Swift fans) locked in to find out who did it and took personal action to halt sites from sharing it. Hundreds of thousands of them poured their concern out to Taylor as a victim. The app formerly named Twitter, immediately blocked her name from being searched to assist in slowing down the spread of the video. Ten states took action to legally ban deep-fake technology. It didn’t stop there though. Government officials got involved. Swift’s video was the topic of concern at the White House. Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre gave a statement in response to the massive concern of Swift’s situation, ensuring the public that they personally couldn’t do anything to help because it is up to each platform to have policies in place to prevent this from happening. “While social media companies make their own independent decisions about content management, we believe they have an important role to play in enforcing their own rules to prevent the spread of misinformation and non-consensual, intimate imagery of real people.”
Many narratives mentioned Megan’s fake video being the act of Nicki fans who have a history of making hateful content against her. There wasn’t, however, anywhere close to as much narrative of empathy or support shown towards the Megan as there was for Taylor. No calls to action, or public unity. There were no vlogs demanding consequences to the creator of the ill-will video. Instead of seeing an uproar against the people who did this to Megan, every headline boasted about her crying on stage during the show. What makes people ride at dawn for one victim but criticize another? The world went bat-crazy over a pop star who’s been sexually objectified and cyber bullied but disregarded it when a rap star suffers from the same line of fire. There’s no proof of what Megan was even crying about, the majority of people just slapped a label on that vulnerable moment, connecting dots they’ve drawn themselves. Meanwhile, with Swift, there were no assumptions of how she felt; they took pity without hearing her commentary then took her words at face value when she did speak. The song Megan performed at the time of the video is Cobra, a song she wrote expressing her struggles with dealing with her Mother’s passing, dealing with depression in the public eye, being used for monetary gain, and feelings of suicide, amongst other serios topics. There’s a chance that her emotional moment came from having to perform such a personal song. Until she says so, we’ll never know. Megan mentioned in an interview about this track how much it meant to her to write such transparent lyrics. “Cobras exemplify courage and self-reliance. They stand tall and fierce in the face of challenges, teaching one to tap into their inner strength and rely on oneself to conquer their threats.” It’s a bit ironic that this is the meaning behind song she was performing in the time in question of her crying over a sex tape. In a world where people are treated so blatantly different in the spotlight, it’s hard to believe it’s being overlooked by so many people. We’ve seen disproportionate reactions in other situations where two people of different backgrounds get treated differently. US laws haven’t caught up with technology, but that shouldn’t stop people from being treated fairly and with respect. Racial division and discrimination are social stances that unfortunately don’t disappear at a certain level of income or fame. In the end, hopefully these disparities will be recognized and both women’s unfortunate experiences get handled with care, privacy, and the legal reprimanded.
