Taylor Swift is the latest celebrity whose image has been used to create “deepfake” pornography on the internet. But while she has the financial muscle to push back against this horrific assault on her privacy, for millions of ordinary women around the world, the official advice is often to ignore the problem and hope it goes away. That is the depressing message of Another Body: My AI Porn Nightmare, an upsetting yet gripping feature-length documentary by Sophie Compton and Reuben Hamlyn broadcast by the BBC as part of its Storyville strand (BBC Four, Tuesday, 10pm).
Another Body tells the story of another Taylor – 22-year-old Connecticut computer engineering graduate Taylor Klein, who learns her likeness has been digitally superimposed over explicit pornography. It is, needless to say, a dreadful discovery – and her anger turns to frustration when she is told there is little police can do because deepfakes are not outlawed in Connecticut.
“People are messaging because they found me on a porn website,” says Taylor. “I was shocked that my name and my face were on there. My school and my hometown were just there. These have had 10,000 views.”
Another Body, of course, makes for uneasy viewing, but Compton and Hamlyn reel the viewer in by presenting the story as a digital detective story. Taylor discovers that another woman at her college, Julia, has also been deepfaked, and that they have a mutual acquaintance.
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The perpetrator turns out to be a quiet software engineer whom both the victims had befriended before his emotional neediness drove them away. “He tried to make me his personal therapist,” says Julia. “I couldn’t handle it any more. He’d never do it to any of the guys.”
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Another Body has another twist, however. Halfway through, it is revealed that neither Taylor nor Julia are in fact who they say they are. They’re real – as is the ordeal they’ve been through. For the documentary, however, they use assumed names, while the faces we see on screen are deepfakes themselves. It’s an unsettling pivot – proof that deepfakes are now indistinguishable from reality.
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Taylor and Julia’s abuser had also posted images of dozens of other women. They include a famous ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) YouTuber named Gibi, who had the resources to pursue him legally (a case ongoing at the documentary’s conclusion). But no such course of action is open to Taylor or Julia. As this reality dawns on Taylor, she is momentarily lost for words. “Sometimes,” she says finally, “the bad guys win.”
