A woman was left horrified after a stranger turned her mirror selfie into a sick AI-generated deepfake nude photo and then taunted her with it.
The horrifying moment
Courtney, who we will not be identifying, woke up last Friday to find a stranger had sent her a nude photo of herself over Instagram, accompanied by a smirking emoji.
The person had screenshotted a selfie she had posted on her account and uploaded it to one of the many deepfake nude-generating websites that will ‘virtually undress’ any person in any photo.
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She suffered anxiety
Horrified, Courtney, who is in her 20s, blocked the account and has now removed all photos of herself from her social media in fear this will happen again.
But she was left in a constant state of anxiety, thinking about if the photo had been sent to anyone else – to her followers, her friends, her family.
Thousands of women and girls have been victims of deepfake porn which has risen steeply with the emergence of AI technology.
In 2017, a deepfake pornographic video of Wonder Woman star Gal Gadot was created by a Reddit user and spread like wildfire online.
Why women and girls are targets
Since then, the practice has become increasingly common, targeting celebrities like actresses Scarlett Johansson and Emma Watson.
But thousands of women and girls going about their everyday lives are targeted for simply saying no to men – or for no reason at all.
One website which virtually strips women naked received 38million hits in the first eight months of 2021, according to the UK government.
Describing the ordeal, Courtney told MailOnline: ‘A completely innocent image of me was made into something different.’
She had been shocked – she instantly blocked the account and went back to sleep.
Courtney was in a state of disbelief about what happened to her and felt sick to her stomach.
