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Jodie has been dealing with internet harassment since she was a teenager.
After browsing, Jodie found graphic photos and a video claiming she was involved in illegal activities.
Deepfakes, which use machine learning to transform someone’s face into pornographic material without their consent, have been used to harass women for a few years now. As AI technologies advance, the number of non-consensual deep fakes increases exponentially. A woman from the United Kingdom has come forward to explain how she discovered the person who produced her deep pornographic images.
Jodie (name changed), in an interview with the BBC, revealed that she had received a link to a pornographic web page via an anonymous email address. After browsing, he found graphic photos and a video claiming that she was involved in illegal activities. The user had asked other users to create fake pornography of her and promised to give more pictures and information about Jodie in exchange for the fakes.
She recalled to the news outlet, “I was screaming and crying and violently scrolling through my phone to work out what I was reading and what I was looking at. I knew this could really ruin my life.”
Jodie has been dealing with internet harassment since she was a teenager. From time to time, someone would post her pictures on certain social media sites. Unauthorized use of her name and images was occurring on dating apps. Jodie was also notified by a friend of many Twitter accounts that were sharing her photos with messages suggesting she was a sex worker during the COVID-19 lockdown.
Next, she and her friend Daisy sat down and wrote down every person who could possibly do the job. She blamed her ex-boyfriend and felt she had cracked the code. However, he was far from done when he received the anonymous email about deepfakes.
Jodie and Daisy had excluded a few men from their list that they trusted completely, including Alex Woolf, Jodie’s best friend, and members of their family. During their teenage years, Jodie and Alex became close friends due to their mutual appreciation of classical music.
Woolf went on to win the BBC’s Young Composer of the Year in 2012, gain a double first in music from Cambridge University and make an appearance on Mastermind in 2021.
Looking at the deeply pornographic images, she noticed a picture of herself in profile showing King’s College, Cambridge, in the background. She clearly remembered that it had been taken and that Woolf was also included in the picture. Moreover, she had shared the photo with no one else but him. Woolf was the one who had offered to trade more of Jodie’s original photos for deep fakes in exchange for being shared.
Woolf, aged 26, was found guilty in August 2021 of taking pictures of 15 women – Jodie among them – from social media and posting them to adult websites. He was sentenced to 20 weeks in prison, suspended for two years, and also had to pay £100 compensation to each of his victims.
Woolf told the BBC he was “absolutely ashamed” of the behavior that led to his conviction and was “deeply sorry” for his actions. Woolf, however, denies any involvement in the harassment of Jodie, which took place before the events for which he was prosecuted.
