Trolls have been making ‘deepfake’ porn pics and videos of me for ten years – it’s abuse
A WOMAN has told how trolls have been relentlessly making deepfake porn pictures and videos of her for over a decade.
Noelle Martin has been targeted with the sick technology since she was a teen, and still has to see her face fused onto X-rated content.
She discovered snaps had been stolen from her social media and photoshopped onto the bodies of adult stars when she was just 18.
The lawyer, based in Perth, Australia, had innocently carried out a reverse image search of herself when she stumbled across the horrifying clips.
Although she knew the videos and pictures were forged, Noelle admitted the vile creators had done a "hugely convincing" job.
She said it was "completely horrifying, dehumanising, degrading" that her images had been used without consent to make fake pornography.
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The horrifying pictures, presumably mocked up with AI technology, falsely depicted her in a string of graphic sex scenes.
Noelle frantically contacted several websites who had shared the images to get them removed - some didn't respond, while others took them down only for them to reappear again.
The terrified teen contacted police in 2012, but there were no specific laws against deepfake porn in Australia at the time.
Noelle explained that having her face superimposed on the sick content impacted every aspect of her life, including her job, relationships and family.
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She told : "This is something that you cannot escape from because it is a permanent, lifelong form of abuse.
"They are literally robbing your right to self-determination, effectively, because they are misappropriating you, and your name and your image and violating you permanently.
"You do not have control over the way that you’re represented, and the way that you that you that you present to the rest of the world.
"That impacts everything, from your economic freedom, to your employability, to your interpersonal relationships, to your romantic relationships to your physical and emotional wellbeing."
But the legal hotshot wasn't going to let the depraved trolls win, so launched a lengthy battle to get the images removed from the web.
The 28-year-old proved an instrumental force in changing the law Down Under to criminalise the distribution of non-consensual intimate images.
Despite her legal triumph in 2018, Noelle was still powerless to prevent more explicit snaps being published on the internet.
She says it seemed to have fuelled the fire of trolls targeting her, as the problem seemed to escalate the more she spoke out.
Even A-listers haven't been immune to the disturbing trend, with the likes of Scarlett Johansson and Gal Gadot also falling victim.
The chillingly realistic clips and pics expertly mirror the movements of a person - leaving many people unable to tell what's real and what's fake.
This has spurred Noelle to share her story publicly, to reveal the "toll" it takes on victims to have the foul images attached to their names.
She continued: "Our lives are completely fused in the digital age between what happens on the internet and what happens in real life.
“What people post and images of them and their likeness and their bodies, even in digital form, I would say is, is an extension of their body."
The lawyer warned that "taking someone else’s image without asking for consent" for the purpose of deepfake porn has far-reaching ramifications.
Noelle said: "If you are going out of your way to take someone else’s body and do horrific things to it, violate it, dehumanise it, and misappropriate it without asking for permission without consent, then that is that is a problem.
"People want control of what happens to their bodies, and to their lives and their sexualities, and their personhood.
"And if we had greater consent, education, then people would recognise other people’s boundaries, what is acceptable and what is not."
The Aussie is keen for people to view the digital form of sexual abuse as the same as other similar crimes that play out in the real world.
Noelle has since become an advocate for the issue, as she is inspired to make the world a better place for her "nieces and future generations."
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Her goal is to hold perpetrators and tech companies who fail to take adequate action to combat the abuse to account.
She will discuss her harrowing story on the upcoming SBS docuseries Asking For It, which explores the importance of education on consent amid a spike in the number of sex attacks in Australia.
