Scarlett Johansson speaks out about fake sex videos using her face: 'The internet is a vast wormhole of darkness'
As fake sex videos becomes more and more prevalent, Scarlett Johansson worries “it’s just a matter of time” before anyone’s face can easily be superimposed onto someone else’s body to make it look like they made a sex tape, she told the Washington Post.
Known as “deepfakes,” these videos primarily target women — and Johansson’s face has already been used in multiple manipulated videos posted online.
“Nothing can stop someone from cutting and pasting my image or anyone else’s onto a different body and making it look as eerily realistic as desired,” the actress told the Post. “The fact is that trying to protect yourself from the Internet and its depravity is basically a lost cause. … The internet is a vast wormhole of darkness that eats itself.”
Because deepfake creators largely rely on photos posted to social media — and because the law hasn’t had time to adequately catch up with the new phenomenon — it’s difficult for women to take legal action, as the Post reports. And for a celebrity like Johansson whose face is plastered all over the internet, it’s impossible to control how those images are used by others.
Similar techniques were used earlier this year to doctor a video of Parkland survivor Emma González to make it look like she was ripping up the U.S. Constitution.
But women who aren’t in the public eye have also discovered that their face was superimposed in videos that more often than not were pοrnographic. An unnamed woman described her experience to the Post, explaining that she felt “violated” by fake videos of her and felt helpless knowing she couldn’t take them down.
While online trackers attempt to make it easier to distinguish a fake video from a real one, Johansson told the Post she believes it may be too late for women to fully protect themselves from the “virtually lawless [online] abyss.”
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