Exclusive: A university student who became the target of a “nude” photo scandal has opened up about how the image still haunts her to this day.
Cadence, whose surname we left out for privacy reasons, was inundated with messages from friends telling her images of herself were being sold from an Instagram account.
The digitally altered photo of Cadence (left) and the original (right). Nine
The 20-year-old’s personal images, which were edited to show more cleavage, showed her wearing a blue shirt in a children’s bedroom with a caption promising nude pictures of her.
“It was my face edited onto someone else’s body,” Cadence explained to nine.com.au.
“At first I wasn’t really worried because no one actually (paid for) and got any photos that I know of at least.
“Then I was thinking about it, I thought, ‘They definitely still have those photos that they’ve made of me… they’ve just gone and sold it somewhere else.’
“That’s when I kind of freaked out.”
She quickly realised the scammers might not have been bluffing, and her world fell apart.
Cadence was the victim of a deepfake scam. Supplied
She was convinced she “had a stalker” and thought she was going to “die”.
“Something that went through my head was, ‘I don’t even know where these pictures are right now’… if that ends up online, I would lose my job. I work with kids,” she said.
“It would just ruin my life.”
The account was taken down within three hours, thanks to her friends reporting it.
But it didn’t stop the paranoia she’ll have to live with for the rest of her life.
“I went to report it to the police, but they said that they couldn’t do anything because the account was already taken down,” Cadence said.
“I’m searching my name up once a week just to make sure nothing comes up.”
Once these deepfake images are made, there’s no way to tell where they have been shared.
It’s just one of the many facets making up the complex issue, deepfake expert and PhD candidate Noelle Martin said.
“It is a really dangerous and scary time for a lot of people, particularly women and girls, because this is happening more and more every other day,” she said.
“It can happen to anyone. If anyone wants to target you, the technologies are available (for them) to do so.”
Martin added that deepfakes and digitally altered photographs of women are the new frontier when it comes to sexual abuse and predatory behaviour.
“It’s an evolution of the ways in which women and girls are exploited,” she said.
“An evolution of technology has allowed this to become more accessible, easier and cheaper to make.
“It’s also turning women and girls into commodities because, like what happened to Cadence, the perpetrator might ask for payment for accessing it.
“These people are trading in the lives and livelihoods of women and girls.”
Deepfake expert and PhD candidate Noelle Martin Supplied
Martin, who decided to focus her PhD research on the regulation of technologies of human replication after becoming a victim of a deepfake image herself, said the major issue facing the existing regulation was enforcement.
“It’s already regulated at the state and federal level… but we need really strong regulations that go after the pipeline that enables deepfakes, just as much as they go after perpetrators,” she said.
“We have made strides in Australia, but it is limited because of the global nature of the abuse.
“What if the perpetrator isn’t in the same jurisdiction as the victim? You also have other issues to do with whether or not law enforcement has the resources or the will (to stop it).
“Also, how long is that going to take? When you’re dealing with an image that can easily spread, time is of the essence.
“There are just so many compounding challenges.”
She added that in her experience, getting the photos taken down is nearly impossible.
“I have gone through that system, I’ve tried to get things removed,” she said.
“By the time I found out what was happening to me, it was already too late.
“That’s the reality, you don’t know when it’s going to come up again.”
Martin says that while the responsibility should never fall to women and girls to stop this from happening to them, some actions, like making your social media account private, could help.
However, she says the “harsh reality” is that if someone you know wants to target you, and they have access to your private Instagram account, you’re still at risk.
“You can try and protect your digital footprint, but it comes with a caveat: you can never guarantee that you’re not going to be a target.
“What can you do to protect yourself? The hard truth is not that much.”
The harsh reality of deepfakes? There's no real way to protect yourself. Getty
Australia’s eSafety Commission received 100 reports of digitally altered images in the past financial year, which was an alarming 186 per cent increase from the year before.
eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant says it successfully removes 98 per cent of “harmful” images as part of the commission’s image-based abuse scheme.
However, she said the issue remains a “key area of concern” due to the “rapidly evolving nature of generative AI”.
“As well as helping individual victims through our image-based abuse reporting scheme, eSafety takes a holistic approach to protecting all Australians from this harmful material, and critically, this includes regulating artificial intelligence,” Grant said in a statement to nine.com.au.
“We have a range of regulatory tools that address AI safety and potential harms, including our transparency powers, complaint schemes and our world-leading enforceable codes and standards.”
Australia’s eSafety Commission received 100 reports of digitally altered images in the past financial year, Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said. Alex Ellinghausen
“But a greater burden must fall on the purveyors and profiteers of AI services to take a more robust approach so they are engineering out misuse at the front end – deploying Safety by Design at every stage of the design, development and deployment process, in line with their obligations under Australia’s online safety framework.”
“Along with building in these safeguards, platforms also need to be doing much more to detect, remove and prevent the spread of this extremely harmful content.”
Nine.com.au has reached out to Meta for comment.
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