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- Author, kate west
- Role, on bbc file 4
“Jodie” discovered her images had been altered to create “deepfake” pornography, and then she was faced with another horrifying truth. He spoke to the BBC about the moment he realized the person responsible was one of his best friends.
Warning: This article contains offensive language and descriptions of sexual violence.
In the spring of 2021, Jodi (not her real name) received an email from an anonymous account with a link to a website.
When she clicked, she found explicit photos and a video in which she was seen having sex with multiple men. Jodie’s face was digitally fused to another woman’s body in a process known as a “deepfake”.
Someone posted photos of Jodie’s face on a porn site and said it made her feel “very horny” and asked if other users of the site could create fake porn of her. In exchange for the deepfake, the user offered to share more photos of Jodi and details about her.
Speaking for the first time about her experience, Jodie, now in her twenties, says: “I was screaming and crying and trying to figure out what I was reading and seeing. Was checking her phone violently.”
He adds: “I knew this could literally ruin my life.”
Forcing herself to look at porn sites, Jody said she felt like her “whole world was falling apart.”
Then his eyes fell on a particular image and he realized something terrible.
a series of disturbing events
This was not the first time Jodi was attacked.
In fact, what was happening to her was the culmination of years of anonymous online abuse.
When Jodi was a teenager, she discovered that her name and photos were used without her consent on dating apps.
This continued for years and even, in 2019, she received a Facebook message from a stranger saying he planned to meet her at Liverpool Street station in London for a date.
He told the man it was not him he was talking to. She says she felt “nervous” because he knew everything about her and had managed to find her online. He found her on Facebook after “Jody” stopped responding on the dating app.
In May 2020, during the pandemic in the United Kingdom, A friend also alerted Jodie to several Twitter accounts posting photos of her with captions indicating she was a sex worker.
“What would you like to do with little teen Jody?” read a caption accompanying a photo of Jodi in a bikini, which was taken from her personal social media account.
Twitter users who posted these images had names like “slut revelator” and “pervert boss.”
All images used were ones she had shared on her social networks with close friends and family, but not with anyone else.
She then discovered that these accounts were also posting photos of other women she knew from university, as well as from her hometown of Cambridge.
defend yourself
Jodie began contacting the other women in the photos to warn them what was happening, including a close friend named Daisy.
“I felt bad,” Daisy said.
Together, the friends discovered several other Twitter accounts that were posting their photos.
“The more we looked, the worse things got,” Daisy said.
He sent a message to Twitter users asking them where he got his photos. The response was that the photos were “submissions” from anonymous senders who wanted to share them.
One user responded, “Either it’s an ex or it’s someone who gets turned on by you.”
Daisy and Jody made a list of all the men who followed them both on social media and who could see their photos.
Friends conclude that he must be Jodie’s ex-boyfriend. Jody confronts him and blocks him.
The posts stopped for a few months, but then they were contacted by an anonymous email sender.
“Sorry to remain anonymous,” the email said, “but I noticed this person was posting pictures of you on creepy subreddits. I know it would be really scary.
“Someone is posting your photos on weird subreddits.”
Jodie clicked on the link and was taken to the Reddit online forum, where a user had posted photos of her and her two friends, numbered 1, 2 and 3.
Others were invited to play a game online: Which of these women would you have sex with, marry, or kill?
55 people had already commented under the post.
The photos used on the site were recent and were posted after Jody blocked his ex-girlfriend. The women realized that they had blamed the wrong person.
Six weeks later, the same email sender got in touch again, this time to discuss deepfakes.
‘The ultimate betrayal’
When making their list, Jody and Daisy ruled out a handful of men they trusted completely, such as their family members and Jody’s best friend, Alex Wolf.
Jody and Alex formed a close friendship as teenagers over their shared love of classical music.
Alex Woolf (interviewed here on BBC Newsnight) was one of Jodie’s best friends.
When Jody discovers that her name and photos are being used on dating apps without her consent, she seeks solace from Wolf.
Woolf completed a double degree in music at the University of Cambridge and won the BBC Young Composer of the Year award in 2012, as well as appearing in Mastermind in 2021.
“He (Wolf) was very aware of women’s problems, especially on the Internet,” says Jody.
“I really felt like he stood up for me.”
However, when she viewed the deepfake porn images, her profile had an image of King’s College Cambridge behind it.
He clearly remembered that it was taken and that Wolf was also in the photo. He was the only person I shared the image with.
Jodie’s photo (blurred) with Alex, a cropped version of which was uploaded to a porn website.
It was Wolf who offered to share more of Jodie’s original photos in exchange for turning them into deepfakes.
“He knew the impact he was having on my life,” says Jody. “And he did it anyway.”
‘Completely embarrassed’
In August 2021, 26-year-old Woolf was found guilty of taking photos of 15 women, including Jodi, from social media and uploading them to pornographic websites.
He was given a 20-week prison sentence, suspended for two years, and ordered to repay each victim. Approximately US$130 in compensation.
Woolf told the BBC that she was “utterly embarrassed” by the behavior that led to her conviction and that she was “deeply sorry” for her actions.
“I think about what I have endured every day, and I have no doubt that I will for the rest of my life,” he says.
“There is no excuse for what I did, nor can I adequately explain why I acted so despicably on these impulses at the time.”
Wolf has denied having anything to do with the harassment of Jody, which occurred before the events he is accused of.
For Jody, finding out what her friend had done was “the ultimate betrayal and humiliation.”
“I relived every conversation we had, where he consoled me, supported me and was kind to me. It was all a lie.”
We contacted X, formerly Twitter and Reddit, about the post. X did not respond, but a Reddit spokesperson said: “Non-consensual intimate content has no place on the Reddit platform. The subreddit in question is banned.” The porn site has also been removed.
In October 2023, sharing deepfake pornography became a criminal offense in the UK under the Online Safety Bill.
There are thousands of deepfake videos online. Recent research found that 98% are pornographic.
However, Jody is upset that the new law does not criminalize a person who asks others to create deepfakes, which is what Alex Woolf did. Creating deepfakes is also not illegal.
“Thousands of women are being affected by this and we need to have the right laws and tools in place to stop people doing this,” she says.
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