Speaker 1: Before we get started. This episode discusses sexual abuse in suicide.
Speaker 1: Please take care while listening.
Speaker 2: It was just one of the most painful and traumatizing, humiliating,
Speaker 2: degrading experiences my life.
Speaker 1: Paris Ultan was nineteen when an intimate private video of
Speaker 1: herself was released to the world without her consent in
Speaker 1: the gossip magazines. It was a scandal, but in reality
Speaker 1: it was abuse.
Speaker 2: It was like being digitally raped and having the whole
Speaker 2: world watching it and laughing, and I just felt just
Speaker 2: so ashamed when that shame should never been on me,
Speaker 2: And yeah, that's something that I'll have to live with
Speaker 2: for the rest of my life.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and four, in the early days of
Speaker 1: the Internet, Paris's one video was viewed millions of times.
Speaker 1: The widespread distribution of that sexually explicit video was non consensual.
Speaker 1: And today we're experiencing a new version of this reality,
Speaker 1: except this time you don't even have to take a
Speaker 1: real photo or a video with AI.
Speaker 3: All you have to do is exist.
Speaker 2: Now that it's happening today, and you don't even have
Speaker 2: to know the person that can literally just take your
Speaker 2: photo and just make it as just terrifying.
Speaker 1: Once again, Paris's likeness is being used without her consent,
Speaker 1: but this time it's AI generated and it's appearing on
Speaker 1: sites like Mister Deep Fakes and beyond.
Speaker 2: It's very triggering now to see it happening, even at
Speaker 2: a larger scale, with strangers all around the world who
Speaker 2: I've never even met, and there's a one hundred something
Speaker 2: thousand deep fake images of me. It's just disgusting. And
Speaker 2: what also hurts me so much is that these are
Speaker 2: not real images, but people don't know that. People, if
Speaker 2: they don't understand AI, they would just assume it's real.
Speaker 2: And I've worked so hard just really changed that image
Speaker 2: of me because it never should have been that. You know,
Speaker 2: what happened with me was someone I was nineteen. I
Speaker 2: was in a serious relationship. I trusted him, and that
Speaker 2: was so long ago, and it's I feel like it's
Speaker 2: something that's haunted me my whole life, so now for
Speaker 2: it to be happening again, but on such a larger scale,
Speaker 2: it's just it's so humiliated. That's why it's you know,
Speaker 2: even though it's uncomfortable to talk about, you know, I'm
Speaker 2: speaking out for all these other women and children who
Speaker 2: are having to deal with this right now so that
Speaker 2: they can have some justice.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, I'd seen this story before, the one where tech
Speaker 1: moves fast, the laws haven't caught up, and women are
Speaker 1: the first victims. What happened to Paris in the early
Speaker 1: two thousands was a predictor of what would come and
Speaker 1: now her deep fake abuse is symbolic of the reality
Speaker 1: we live in today, and that's what brought us together.
Speaker 2: I don't understand how it's legal for there's to be
Speaker 2: all these apps that are coming up now and websites
Speaker 2: where people can do this to others, because it could
Speaker 2: really ruin someone's life and destroy their confidence, destroy their future.
Speaker 1: I'm Laurie Siegel, and you're listening to Mostly Human, a
Speaker 1: tech podcast through a human lens. This is searching for
Speaker 1: Mister Deep Fakes Part four.
Speaker 3: This one was okay. This is when we heard the.
Speaker 1: Heartbeat, which, like that is so wild that at the
Speaker 1: moment that's really cool. Yeah, that's my husband John. As
Speaker 1: you can tell, something pretty big happened. A month after
Speaker 1: we got back from finding the operator behind mister deep
Speaker 1: Fakes in Canada, John and I found out we were
Speaker 1: going to have a baby. The Journey to Stop Deep
Speaker 1: Fake Abuse felt even more urgent now it was personal.
Speaker 1: I realize that it's not enough to go find the guy.
Speaker 1: We have to help people see the thing they're not
Speaker 1: seeing yet. Politicians, folks who can move the needle. And
Speaker 1: then I think, as a mom it just makes it like.
Speaker 3: All of it just feels urgent.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a win is like being able to not just
Speaker 1: take down mister deep Fakes, but like fundamentally change, like
Speaker 1: the like the process that enables these types of things
Speaker 1: to exist. You know, something that really makes it so
Speaker 1: other people have recourse if this happens to them.
Speaker 4: You've got to remember you are putting blocks in the foundation.
Speaker 4: I think it's really important to keep that perspective of
Speaker 4: change because there's a lot of different ingredients and change.
Speaker 4: There are seeds. There's the dirt, there's the water, there's
Speaker 4: the sunshine, and I think what you're creating now is
Speaker 4: the seed.
Speaker 1: After talking to David Does back in Canada, we had
Speaker 1: a new resolve for this investigation. We came back with
Speaker 1: this thought to create actual change, we had to cast
Speaker 1: a wide net and talk to as many people as
Speaker 1: possible about this.
Speaker 3: This is round two of our investigation. Round one was
Speaker 3: finding mister d Finks.
Speaker 1: Round two is like, how do we actually create change.
Speaker 3: We have like a whole little war room set up,
Speaker 3: so we put.
Speaker 1: Together are good guy hackers who helped us track mister
Speaker 1: d Fikes. Now we're putting together essentially like a team
Speaker 1: of policy folks, celebrities, you name it, folks who can
Speaker 1: help us, like we think move the needle forward.
Speaker 5: So it's legal action, legislative change, and cultural change, like
Speaker 5: all working in concert, not just one.
Speaker 3: But it's a big task.
Speaker 1: My first step was Casey Mock, who at the time
Speaker 1: was the senior policy director at the Center for Humane Technology.
Speaker 5: This is set up to have that army of mister
Speaker 5: d fix grow kind of automatically by default.
Speaker 6: There's a pipeline.
Speaker 5: Here where now you know, young men largely will be
Speaker 5: given access to these newification apps. They'll be playing with it,
Speaker 5: and you know, they make one deep fake of someone
Speaker 5: that they know, someone of classmate.
Speaker 7: And they're in.
Speaker 5: They're in it, and they may try to figure out
Speaker 5: ways that they can either do it themselves or monetize
Speaker 5: it or whatever, and then they're like in the system.
Speaker 5: They're a member of that army. And it seems like,
Speaker 5: you know, the hosts of the website and the people
Speaker 5: behind it are more than willing to train people up
Speaker 5: to be able to do this themselves, right, to generate
Speaker 5: their own content. And so it has this like flywheel
Speaker 5: effect where it's if we do nothing right, that army
Speaker 5: is just going to grow, right.
Speaker 3: I think that's the fear right.
Speaker 1: So it's like, how do we take all of the
Speaker 1: stuff that we learn and actually create change?
Speaker 3: And I think this is like what you've done your
Speaker 3: whole career, right, which is.
Speaker 1: Like take some of these like heartbreaking things, but also
Speaker 1: helped push forward go behind closed doors in DC, like
Speaker 1: talk to the right people to try to push forward policies.
Speaker 5: You've been covering tech for more than a decade, and
Speaker 5: like you've seen stuff that policy advocates have never seen.
Speaker 5: Like you've had conversations that they haven't had access to,
Speaker 5: So you have information that's very valuable to policymakers.
Speaker 1: On the legislative side, there'd been some movement. In the
Speaker 1: summer of twenty twenty four, two federal bills to Take
Speaker 1: It Down Act and the Defiance Act were introduced. They
Speaker 1: work toward different things, criminalizing the creation of AI generated
Speaker 1: images on the one hand, and providing civil recourse for
Speaker 1: victims on the other but.
Speaker 6: This is not innovation. This is a twenty first century
Speaker 6: version of sexual abuse and child sexual abuse.
Speaker 3: But some weren't waiting for federal progress.
Speaker 1: The San Francisco Attorney's Office filed an unprecedented case against
Speaker 1: sixteen neuification websites that were targeting everyday people. That case
Speaker 1: was led by San Francisco City Attorney David Chu and
Speaker 1: Chief Deputy City Attorney A von Meir.
Speaker 8: We are trained as lawyers that there is a system
Speaker 8: of justice and when something unlawful happens, or something unfair happens,
Speaker 8: there's a remedy that you can be sought in our course.
Speaker 6: As soon as we filed this lawsuit, I was contacted
Speaker 6: by colleagues of mine from the California State legislature as
Speaker 6: well as from other places around the country who are
Speaker 6: interested in this space. It's not enough to pass a law.
Speaker 6: You need to have the ability to enforce that law.
Speaker 6: And I think one thing that's clear is a lot
Speaker 6: of these laws were passed with the intent of trying
Speaker 6: to assist victims in vindicating their rights, but the victims
Speaker 6: have found it to be incredibly difficult to get justice
Speaker 6: for themselves and their situations, which is why we felt
Speaker 6: so compelled to step in.
Speaker 9: We are never going to be able in these kinds
Speaker 9: of cases to sue everyone. It is a powerful whole tool,
Speaker 9: but we need partners and we need to raise awareness.
Speaker 1: What do you think needs to happen from a legal
Speaker 1: standpoint to actually make it so we are safer online
Speaker 1: in this kind of deep fake era.
Speaker 10: Well, my position has always been that we have to
Speaker 10: be holding the platforms responsible.
Speaker 1: Kerry Goldberg is a lawyer who's been helping victims of
Speaker 1: digital abuse for decades.
Speaker 10: They are always going to be bad actors that pedal
Speaker 10: in other people's nudity, whether that's deep fakes or revenge
Speaker 10: porn or sextortion, and so yes, I want criminal laws
Speaker 10: to punish the individual actors, but I also want I
Speaker 10: want victims to be able to go after the platforms
Speaker 10: that are accommodating these kinds of bad actors and are
Speaker 10: like minting money off of it.
Speaker 1: Our coalition was growing at home and abroad in the
Speaker 1: winter of twenty twenty five, connected with partners at the
Speaker 1: Home Office in the UK.
Speaker 11: Thank you so much all for joining, and truly is
Speaker 11: a really special group of expertise that we have today.
Speaker 1: British policymakers had taken a strong lead on the issue,
Speaker 1: announcing plans to criminalize sexually explicit defikes to the point
Speaker 1: where mister Dee Fakes was now blocked in the country.
Speaker 1: They thought to criminalize not just the dissemination of this
Speaker 1: type of material, but also the creation of it.
Speaker 11: Very illuminating information that Laurie and Nicole have been uncovering
Speaker 11: through a multi year investigation. At this point into the
Speaker 11: mister deep Fakes website, which as we all know, is
Speaker 11: a very very pivotal force in the deep fake and
Speaker 11: CIA HOWM landscape.
Speaker 1: It felt like we had momentum, but we also felt
Speaker 1: the urgency for legal, societal and for cultural change to
Speaker 1: move even faster, because just as we had feared deep
Speaker 1: fake abuse was spreading into more vulnerable places our schools,
Speaker 1: now it was affecting the youngest generation coming of age
Speaker 1: with Ai.
Speaker 3: He's like, do you want to see the image?
Speaker 12: Like very cautiously the way he spoke, like, do you
Speaker 12: want to see the image of your daughter?
Speaker 1: Nadia Kahn Roberts is in a small room and the
Speaker 1: police station near her home in Miami, Florida, and A
Speaker 1: detective is handing her a thick binder of images, and I.
Speaker 12: Said, yes, I want to see it.
Speaker 1: The detective opens the binder and Nadia feels an immediate
Speaker 1: wave of nausea.
Speaker 3: Like oh my god.
Speaker 12: I started crying.
Speaker 1: As Nadia's body is flooded with shock. The detective asks
Speaker 1: for something nobody else had.
Speaker 12: He looks at me in the eyes and he goes,
Speaker 12: do you want to press charges? And I said, yes, absolutely,
Speaker 12: I want to press charges.
Speaker 3: The nightmare for Nadia begins.
Speaker 1: Right before Christmas break twenty twenty three, Nadia, a Spanish
Speaker 1: teacher at a local high school, gets a panicked call
Speaker 1: from her thirteen year old daughter in the middle of
Speaker 1: the day.
Speaker 3: She called me first.
Speaker 12: When she was called down to the office, she was
Speaker 12: crying and she says, I need you to come pick
Speaker 12: me up right now.
Speaker 3: I need to leave.
Speaker 12: And I was like, okay, well I'm at work. She's like,
Speaker 12: you don't understand. I need to leave. I saw a picture.
Speaker 12: I saw a picture and then I'm very freaking out.
Speaker 12: I'm like, what picture? What are you talking about? A
Speaker 12: picture of me naked? And I'm like what, No, but
Speaker 12: it's not really me. Mom, And she couldn't even really
Speaker 12: piece stores together because she was having an anxiety attack.
Speaker 1: Nadia drove down to the school and the story quickly unfolded.
Speaker 1: Two boys at her daughter's middle school had been caught
Speaker 1: exchanging AI generated nude photos of their female classmates.
Speaker 12: I'm finding out that there's ten twelve.
Speaker 13: Thirteenth, fourteen, fifteen, up to fifteen girls they did this too.
Speaker 12: Then wait no, there was a teacher they did it
Speaker 12: too as well.
Speaker 3: Wait no, there's another, And I'm like.
Speaker 1: Whoa more than a dozen girls at least two teachers.
Speaker 1: Their images were run through an ai utification app by
Speaker 1: two boys from well respected, hard working families in the community.
Speaker 1: The school called the police and suspended the boys, unsure
Speaker 1: of how to deal with something so new that many
Speaker 1: of them had never even.
Speaker 3: Heard of before.
Speaker 1: After the Christmas break, the boys would return to the
Speaker 1: classes with the girls they deep faked.
Speaker 3: Nadia's daughter was panicked at the thought.
Speaker 14: She's freaking out, like nobody wants to be in a
Speaker 14: room with essentially this an abuser, albeit not physical, right,
Speaker 14: but the facological abuse.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think it is.
Speaker 13: And I'm imagining myself right like having to face these
Speaker 13: kids in the hallway. A lot of these girls have
Speaker 13: classes with.
Speaker 14: These kids, and that's when I really just was like no, no, no, no.
Speaker 3: No no.
Speaker 1: Nadia eventually went to the police station to see the images,
Speaker 1: the big binder of images the boys had created of
Speaker 1: their classmates and teachers, and she was shocked by how
Speaker 1: accurate this fake image of her daughter looked.
Speaker 13: The skin color and the skin tone matched her face.
Speaker 12: Like ninety nine point nine percent, and her private parts
Speaker 12: were accentuated like exaggerated, unrealistic, but it's still it was
Speaker 12: my daughter's face on this body with the same skin
Speaker 12: color tone that I got nauseous and wanted to vomit,
Speaker 12: and I started crying because my kid had to see
Speaker 12: it first alone, without the presence of her parents or
Speaker 12: guardian with her.
Speaker 1: The police told her this could be treated as a
Speaker 1: sex crime child pornography. If they got enough of the
Speaker 1: parents to press charges, they would arrest the boys. Nadia
Speaker 1: spoke to other parents and one of the teachers who
Speaker 1: had been deep faked. It wasn't an easy choice, but
Speaker 1: eventually enough people were on board and the boys were arrested.
Speaker 15: I remember when we were facing that decision, I felt
Speaker 15: the gravity of it.
Speaker 3: Luke is the thirteen year old girl's father.
Speaker 15: It was a really big deal for us. You know,
Speaker 15: these are thirteen year old boys, and I couldn't help
Speaker 15: but think about the other side. They're getting, you know,
Speaker 15: charged with a sex crime that could follow the rest
Speaker 15: of their life.
Speaker 3: So it was it was heavy, but we didn't hesitate.
Speaker 16: We knew it was the right thing to do.
Speaker 1: This was the first case of its kind in the
Speaker 1: United States where charges were actually filed. But what was
Speaker 1: painfully clear about this nightmare to Nadia Luke and others
Speaker 1: was something else had to change. The cultural mindset around
Speaker 1: creating set actually explicit deep fakes in the first place.
Speaker 1: Kids teens, They needed to understand that this was wrong,
Speaker 1: that this type of abuse.
Speaker 3: Hurt and it caused real world harm.
Speaker 17: Our children are all the front lines of the war
Speaker 17: that we didn't even know anything about.
Speaker 3: And we have to get in a fight.
Speaker 1: John and his wife Shannon understand the stakes now too.
Speaker 1: They also have teenagers twin sixteen year olds, Palin and
Speaker 1: Elijah or Eli.
Speaker 18: She straight a student, wants to go to medical school.
Speaker 18: Ali was our Tornado.
Speaker 17: There's nothing common about the war now.
Speaker 1: The family lives in a small country town in Kentucky.
Speaker 1: In February twenty twenty five, Palin and Eli were looking
Speaker 1: forward to prom Eli was about to start the spring
Speaker 1: tennis season. He wanted to help the team go to
Speaker 1: State this year. Everything seemed normal when Shannon and John
Speaker 1: went to bed on February twenty seventh.
Speaker 18: And within an hour and a half, his sister and
Speaker 18: woke us up and totus Eli was hurt.
Speaker 1: Eli had died by suicide, and they had no clue.
Speaker 1: Why how did a well adjusted teenager go from prepping
Speaker 1: for tennis and prom to ending his own life. As
Speaker 1: paramedics took Eli from his home, Shannon's eyes were drawn
Speaker 1: to his phone. She went into his messages and found
Speaker 1: a picture that looked like Eli's face. It was on
Speaker 1: a naked body, but something looked a little bit off.
Speaker 18: I guess was supposed to be Eli. It was Eli's features,
Speaker 18: but it was like so white, I'm talking like a
Speaker 18: piece of paper white.
Speaker 1: Cops and soon the FBI went through the phone and
Speaker 1: told the parents they believed it to be a case
Speaker 1: of sextortion. In the rising tide of cybercrime, boys in
Speaker 1: Eli's adrange were being targeted by scammers who traditionally posed
Speaker 1: as female. Else they'd get boys to send nude photos
Speaker 1: of themselves and then they blackmail them with those photos.
Speaker 1: But AI turbocharges that abuse. The victim no longer needs
Speaker 1: to be tricked into sending any intimate photo of themselves.
Speaker 1: Scammers can now send an AI generated picture to a
Speaker 1: victim and threaten to ruin their lives if they don't
Speaker 1: pay up. And this is what Eli's parents believe happened.
Speaker 1: The scammers wanted three thousand dollars. Eli could only send fifty.
Speaker 17: I know him from top to bottom. There's nothing about
Speaker 17: that picture that matched. But you can't tell that to
Speaker 17: his friends at school. You can't tell that to his principal.
Speaker 17: They don't know. Imagine being a sixteen year old child
Speaker 17: and they're getting correct by multiple people. Texts after text
Speaker 17: after message after message of that's not enough money. You
Speaker 17: better give us our money. You don't give us our money.
Speaker 17: Your parents are going to see this, Your grandparents are
Speaker 17: going to see your friends at school, your principal, everybody's
Speaker 17: going to see this. And that's the pressure that Eli
Speaker 17: was under.
Speaker 18: Fifty dollars for my son's life, fifty dollars. It was
Speaker 18: all who has worked to these people.
Speaker 1: In early twenty twenty five, it felt like we actually
Speaker 1: had momentum.
Speaker 3: Pressure was mounting.
Speaker 1: We just kept pushing out our story and talking to
Speaker 1: the media and to politicians and to leaders in the space.
Speaker 1: And then in February twenty twenty five, I had my son, Charlie.
Speaker 1: I talked about this period with my producers, Roxy and Nicole,
Speaker 1: and I remember I was like, all, right, away, message
Speaker 1: is going up, like Matt leave Yay, you can breathe.
Speaker 1: And then something happened in May of twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: and that something was kind of the thing that we've
Speaker 1: been waiting on for a long time.
Speaker 3: Do y'all remember that day?
Speaker 19: I do. I think you called like a group FaceTime situation.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 19: And I was like probably walking Leo in like a
Speaker 19: baby carrier on me, and it was raining, and I
Speaker 19: was holding the umbrella and trying to like hold the phone,
Speaker 19: but you said that it was really important, so we
Speaker 19: had to get on.
Speaker 1: It was a zoom call with Roxy, me, Roxy's husband Tony,
Speaker 1: and Nicole just wanted to give like a teeny bit
Speaker 1: of breaking news.
Speaker 3: Mister deep Wakes is officially shut down.
Speaker 19: The whole website.
Speaker 3: Whole website, the whole website is gone, like the when
Speaker 3: I think it was late last night, I think this
Speaker 3: is it's gone for good. I like generally like gone
Speaker 3: for good. I don't think it's coming back.
Speaker 1: Wow, seven years, thousands of victims, over one point five
Speaker 1: billion in videos, but finally the largest deep fake porn
Speaker 1: site on the Internet was gone. Do you remember the
Speaker 1: message on the site?
Speaker 3: It said like it.
Speaker 20: Was like a critical service provider has been lost. All
Speaker 20: the data has been lost. This is permanent, and like
Speaker 20: anyone who creates another site their copycats.
Speaker 1: And so a couple of things had happened ahead of that, right,
Speaker 1: beginning with like, let's go back a year when we
Speaker 1: literally I believe we were the first people to show
Speaker 1: up at his door at his workplace to show that
Speaker 1: he could no longer do this anonymously. Right, I think
Speaker 1: that was an important data point. Laws started getting passed.
Speaker 1: They basically cut off access to the UK because it
Speaker 1: would be breaking the law. Now, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: like that puts pressure on payment providers who are no
Speaker 1: longer available on mister deep fakes. All of a sudden,
Speaker 1: it puts pressure on advertisers, It puts pressure on tech platforms,
Speaker 1: Google deranked the site. So the first thing you saw
Speaker 1: wasn't a sexually explicit deep fake of yourself.
Speaker 3: When you googled your name.
Speaker 1: And then the week that it went down to take
Speaker 1: it down at pass, which was the first federal law
Speaker 1: the targeting deep fakes. And then the CBC, another news organization,
Speaker 1: had done an investigation into David Doe and the man
Speaker 1: behind mister deep fakes. So if I could look at
Speaker 1: this and say, well, what actually caused the site to
Speaker 1: go down, it always comes down to the word friction.
Speaker 3: There was friction that was created.
Speaker 1: That made a site like this, a site that people
Speaker 1: told us was an inevitability that okay, welcome to this
Speaker 1: new AI era.
Speaker 3: This is just an inevitability. It doesn't have to be.
Speaker 1: All of these little things that might seem on their
Speaker 1: own inconsequential together created this wave of change that I
Speaker 1: believe is a playbook for the future. As for its
Speaker 1: suspected operator, David Doe was placed on leave at the
Speaker 1: hospital and there's a pending hearing for professional misconduct. The
Speaker 1: Netherlands and Denmark wade ex tradition, and we contacted multiple
Speaker 1: law enforcement agencies in Canada. None reported active investigations. When
Speaker 1: I asked Casey Mock what could come of David Doe,
Speaker 1: he said it was a complicated case.
Speaker 5: It depends on where certain things are hosted or living
Speaker 5: or incorporated right like you found him in Canada. That
Speaker 5: complexifies the issue a lot. It would take a creative prosecutor,
Speaker 5: I think, to put the operator of this website in
Speaker 5: prison right now.
Speaker 1: We spoke to Canadian legal experts who agreed. They said
Speaker 1: there could always be pathways to accountability, but it was
Speaker 1: by no means straightforward. Carry Goldberg, or law expert in
Speaker 1: digital abuse, said that one avenue for victim recourse could
Speaker 1: come from the fact that we had evidence mister deep
Speaker 1: Fakes was both the platform operator and a creator himself.
Speaker 10: So the trick in holding an individual liable is showing
Speaker 10: that he actually was the one creating the content. If
Speaker 10: mister deep Fake was himself actually creating the deep fakes
Speaker 10: and posting those, than absolutely one hundred percent people could
Speaker 10: be holding David liable for that.
Speaker 1: As of the release of this story, David Doe has
Speaker 1: not been convicted or charged with any crime. We've reached
Speaker 1: out to him repeatedly over the last two years, but
Speaker 1: he has yet to respond to any of our requests
Speaker 1: for comment. We had worried that mister deep Fakes was
Speaker 1: the canary in the coal mine. Unfortunately, deep fake abuse
Speaker 1: was now mainstream. It doesn't end with David Doe, and
Speaker 1: it doesn't end with mister deep Fakes going down. The
Speaker 1: work continues. We wanted to push the story of mister
Speaker 1: deep Fakes out to as big of an audience as possible,
Speaker 1: which meant going to the big streamers, but we heard
Speaker 1: the same thing. Executive after executive had every excuse for
Speaker 1: why this issue wasn't exactly made for TV audiences. But
Speaker 1: we pressed on and in January twenty twenty six, a
Speaker 1: new advocate came onto the scene.
Speaker 21: It's the newest form of victimization happening at scale to
Speaker 21: your daughters, your sisters, your friends, and neighbors. A staggering
Speaker 21: one in eight girls today are experiencing the harms of
Speaker 21: AI generated deep fake porn.
Speaker 1: Paris Halton joined Representative Alexandria Ocasio Coorts in support of
Speaker 1: the Defiance Act, which was still since July twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: stalled in the house.
Speaker 21: I hear from teenage girls who are terrified to go
Speaker 21: to school because they know a deep fake of them
Speaker 21: is circulating. I hear from women who are scared to
Speaker 21: run for office, to apply for jobs, to speak publicly,
Speaker 21: because they know how easily their image can be weaponized
Speaker 21: against them. Too many women are afraid to exist online,
Speaker 21: or sometimes to exist at all. And I know how
Speaker 21: that feels because I've lived it.
Speaker 1: I remember like seeing this clip of Paris Hilton, like
Speaker 1: dressed to the nines, like very Paris Hilton esque, like
Speaker 1: on Capitol Hill and talking about this and advocating for this,
Speaker 1: and I remember or because we'd been sitting out there
Speaker 1: for so long, being like trying to tell people, knock
Speaker 1: on doors and say we help us get the story out,
Speaker 1: like it's important. And I remember turning to my husband
Speaker 1: we were in the elevator and saying to John, like,
Speaker 1: I think we should just partner with Paris Hilton and
Speaker 1: get it out through Paris, like she has an incredible platform.
Speaker 3: And he was like, do you know Paris?
Speaker 1: And I was like, no, those are details, but like
Speaker 1: we can track down mister Defix.
Speaker 3: We can track down Paris Hilton.
Speaker 20: And we always like for the entire time when we
Speaker 20: were like how do we have maximized impact of this story?
Speaker 20: Were like, would there be somebody or somebody's who could
Speaker 20: we could team up with and kind of grow this
Speaker 20: this movement together. And so I think that moment at
Speaker 20: the beginning of this year where we saw Paris was
Speaker 20: like a light bulb that went off of Wow, this
Speaker 20: could be the way to take this beyond mister d fix.
Speaker 1: And so we ended up connecting with her team and
Speaker 1: showed them the materials and I have to say, like
Speaker 1: they moved, and they moved quick, and Paris got involved
Speaker 1: in a big way, and we ended up speaking to
Speaker 1: Paris and like that. Do you all remember like we
Speaker 1: were at the New York Stock Exchange on International Women's
Speaker 1: Day with Paris Hilton and Gloria steynem.
Speaker 20: I mean, there was just so much around it that
Speaker 20: was kind of like reclaiming the story. Everyone who was
Speaker 20: like a victim in this like really came out as
Speaker 20: like a strong advocate for change. And that's what it
Speaker 20: felt like when we connected with like with Paris.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not like you're speaking another language to someone.
Speaker 1: So I just have to say the idea that we
Speaker 1: could have Paris Hilton as part of the army is
Speaker 1: I would just say, like to borrow a phrase from
Speaker 1: you iconic, So thank you for doing this and thank
Speaker 1: you for helping us with this mission. I'm curious why
Speaker 1: it's personal to you.
Speaker 2: This work is definitely personal to me, just from what
Speaker 2: I experienced nineteen when there were no laws to protect me.
Speaker 2: So if I can really turn my pain into a
Speaker 2: purpose once again and make it so that other girls
Speaker 2: don't have to go through what I went through, that's
Speaker 2: so meniqual to me. So I'll do whatever in my
Speaker 2: power i can to help.
Speaker 1: People always say to me, oh, you know, if you
Speaker 1: take down mister d fakes, it's just okay, we'll whack
Speaker 1: them all. And I just think, like, that's such a
Speaker 1: boring argument. Like if we take down a site where
Speaker 1: eighteen million people are going and it's teaching young men
Speaker 1: how to do this, and in the process we help
Speaker 1: change laws and we can tell people that this is
Speaker 1: actually this matters.
Speaker 2: And then it you know, tears people from doing it
Speaker 2: because they're going to know there actually is consequences if
Speaker 2: they think, oh, you can just get away with this.
Speaker 2: Of course, people are going to make more sites, but
Speaker 2: if they see make them an example.
Speaker 1: Of mister d Figs, it's if you are able to
Speaker 1: do this in the dark. It's in the darkness that
Speaker 1: this thing thrives. And exposing this, exposing mister deep fakes,
Speaker 1: exposing the pain and abuse that is the real world
Speaker 1: impact of this new technology, and seeing how this is going,
Speaker 1: I think that's that's, you.
Speaker 3: Know, our biggest help.
Speaker 2: Talking about it is a way to make people understand
Speaker 2: the impact it has on people's lives. Really makes a difference.
Speaker 2: And now for me, you know, when this happened, I
Speaker 2: was just taught to stay silent, like, don't bring any attention,
Speaker 2: don't give it oxygen like. So now to be able
Speaker 2: to use my voice, it's been that journey.
Speaker 3: Because in the beginning it was just I couldn't.
Speaker 2: Even talk about it. I was like, I just want
Speaker 2: to pretend this never happened. But now knowing it's happening
Speaker 2: to millions millions of people around the world, just can't
Speaker 2: stay silent.
Speaker 1: It's even more personal now that she's a mom.
Speaker 7: Just becoming a mother has changed my life in so
Speaker 7: many ways and really made me think about the future
Speaker 7: of what I want for my kids, and the fact
Speaker 7: that I'm able.
Speaker 2: To help shape that future is incredibly powerful.
Speaker 1: Paris wanted to help us take our story to the
Speaker 1: main stage. We partnered with her and her company eleven
Speaker 1: eleven Media, and we turned our investigation into a groundbreaking
Speaker 1: fourteen part TikTok series in late May twenty twenty six.
Speaker 2: I'm Paris Hilton and I'm teaming up with journalist Lorie
Speaker 2: Siegel to take the story.
Speaker 3: And the impact of this abuse.
Speaker 1: Reached thirty two million views, and the best part we
Speaker 1: started hearing from so many people parents, other survivors and
Speaker 1: folks who wanted to help.
Speaker 3: But Paris and I weren't done.
Speaker 1: Just as our TikTok series was launching into the world,
Speaker 1: we teamed up to bring our deep fake findings into
Speaker 1: the room where laws are made.
Speaker 3: So we're going right now see if we can get
Speaker 3: this passed no pressure.
Speaker 1: I was about to testify for a bill in California
Speaker 1: that would strengthen protection for victims of deep fakes.
Speaker 22: This bill creates a framework to hold AI users accountable
Speaker 22: by creating legal standing.
Speaker 1: Senator Angelique Ashby was the one to introduce SB eleven
Speaker 1: eleven to the California legislature.
Speaker 22: For victims and defining the boundaries of AI technology. SB
Speaker 22: eleven eleven establishes violations in the Right of Publicity law
Speaker 22: and false impersonation law for using a person's voice or
Speaker 22: likeness to create a digital replica without their consent. As
Speaker 22: technology changes, California must continue to advance our efforts and
Speaker 22: our standards to protect against AI abuse and violence and
Speaker 22: those who are impacted by it.
Speaker 3: And then it was my turn. My name is Lori Siegel.
Speaker 3: I'm an investigative reporter.
Speaker 1: I had the complicated task of boiling a year long
Speaker 1: investigation down to two minutes. The images may be fake,
Speaker 1: but from years in the trenches covering this type of abuse,
Speaker 1: I cannot emphasize this enough.
Speaker 3: The impact is real.
Speaker 5: Bring back to the committee for questions, comments or motion Cortesi.
Speaker 23: Yeah, I uh well, one, I was going to move
Speaker 23: the bill, and two I just appreciate the author for
Speaker 23: bringing this forward. Honestly, it's it is utterly terrifying to
Speaker 23: just see what's been happening with AI and the way
Speaker 23: that it's been weaponized against women, against children. It's it's
Speaker 23: just chilling because it could happen to any single one
Speaker 23: of us.
Speaker 3: And then a vote.
Speaker 5: Okay, we have a motion which is to pass to
Speaker 5: the floor of.
Speaker 3: The Senate floor. Please call the role SB eleven eleven.
Speaker 17: Ashby motion is deep passed to the floor at agen
Speaker 17: atagen I Sarto, Sarto, I Cavirio, Cortesi, GRTSI, I Perez, Perez, I.
Speaker 6: Wiener, keep that bill and call wraps and members.
Speaker 24: Thank you very much.
Speaker 1: Honestly, like, how cool is it that I was talking
Speaker 1: to David David's back and like now I'm talking to
Speaker 1: lawmakers and we just got something through.
Speaker 3: My producer Roxy was there with me.
Speaker 19: It was like not just screaming into a void. It
Speaker 19: was like they read it, they listened to it, they
Speaker 19: passed it, and then like yeah that we talked to
Speaker 19: Senator Ashby about how what is next? How does it
Speaker 19: go from what we are today to the next thing,
Speaker 19: to the next thing, the next thing, And just knowing
Speaker 19: that there are people one hundred percent voted and dedicated
Speaker 19: to passing laws like that, it was like, Okay, Wow,
Speaker 19: that's that's a whole nother part of the army that
Speaker 19: we just peeked into. It's like we're using our tools,
Speaker 19: which is media storytelling, you know, whatever journalism. They're using
Speaker 19: their tools. You know, then victims or survivors are using
Speaker 19: their voices. Like it was kind of like cool to
Speaker 19: know that it's it had been. It felt like it
Speaker 19: had just been us for a long time. Yeah, and
Speaker 19: it definitely wasn't. And that felt cool to know that
Speaker 19: there's all these other paths that to change that are happening.
Speaker 1: And it was so cool because it was immediately past
Speaker 1: the next phase. And I was emotional because it was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: taking this and connecting these dots and then you begin
Speaker 1: to really understand how change happens. What we learned is
Speaker 1: that change doesn't happen in a vacuum, and it certainly
Speaker 1: doesn't happen alone. It's through community and coalition building, but
Speaker 1: also through the bravery of the survivors who speak out
Speaker 1: and speak up. All of the people that you've heard
Speaker 1: in this series, each one of them has turned their
Speaker 1: pain into advocacy. Joanne and Los Angeles continues to share
Speaker 1: her story across platforms.
Speaker 24: It can be scary and nerve wracking to speak up
Speaker 24: about it publicly, but at the same time, it's important
Speaker 24: to take back our image. I feel like that's the
Speaker 24: only way we can hopefully affect change.
Speaker 1: As for Briton, Tennessee, I want to use my story.
Speaker 3: My attorney asked me that once He's like, how far
Speaker 3: do you want to take this? And it's like to
Speaker 3: the very fucking edge. Thank yeah, it stops with me.
Speaker 3: I want to make this better for other people.
Speaker 1: She helped change laws in her state. Same with Molly
Speaker 1: in Minnesota.
Speaker 3: I cannot stand the idea.
Speaker 13: Of just letting it be.
Speaker 3: We want to fight and I'm here for it.
Speaker 1: Shannon and John, whose son was a victim of sex stortion,
Speaker 1: they won't stop either.
Speaker 17: Unfortunately, we're not fighting for our son. Our son anxiety passed.
Speaker 17: We're doing everything we can to make sure this doesn't
Speaker 17: happen to somebody else's kid.
Speaker 1: And Nadia and Luke, whose daughter was a victim of
Speaker 1: deep fakes. They started a nonprofit to help victims, but
Speaker 1: also educate teens to prevent this abuse from happening in
Speaker 1: the first place.
Speaker 16: How can we find teenagers who we can sort of
Speaker 16: train on the ethics of AI and let them be
Speaker 16: mentors to younger like preteens, and have these workshops and
Speaker 16: these experiences so that it's not reactive, it's proactive, that
Speaker 16: we become sort of an entity of hope.
Speaker 1: This is how we take this fight into the future.
Speaker 1: We do it together. This story is an over We're
Speaker 1: going to continue the conversation right here on this podcast.
Speaker 1: We'll talk to experts, we'll bring your questions to leaders,
Speaker 1: and we'll share the real world devastation that this digital
Speaker 1: harm causes. We have already heard from people more victims
Speaker 1: of deep fake abuse, and we're going to bring their
Speaker 1: stories to this podcast. If you've been a victim of
Speaker 1: deep fake abuse and you need help or resources, or
Speaker 1: you want to share your story, we want to hear
Speaker 1: from you, go to beyondmisterdepfakes dot com. And if you've
Speaker 1: got a tip something in the tech space that you
Speaker 1: want investigated, find me on social media at mostly human
Speaker 1: Media or email us at hello at mostlyhuman dot com.
Speaker 1: Mostly Human is a production of iHeart podcasts Mostly Human Media.
Speaker 1: Searching for Mister de Fakes is a multi year investigation
Speaker 1: in partnership with BFD and eleven eleven Media. It's produced
Speaker 1: and edited by Laurie Siegel, Nicole Bouchet, Lauren Hanson, aboo Zafar,
Speaker 1: Roxy Hunt, and Tony Castle. Sound design and mixing by
Speaker 1: Derek Clements and abou Zafar. If you want to see
Speaker 1: our short form vertical docuseries on mister de fakes. Go
Speaker 1: to mostly Human Media on TikTok or Paris Hilton's TikTok channel.
Speaker 1: Find us all on socials at mostly human Media. You
Speaker 1: can also watch mostly Human on our YouTube page, and
Speaker 1: if you want to get in touch, please email us
Speaker 1: at hello at mostly human dot com.
Speaker 3: We'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: Oh and please rate and review the show and share
Speaker 1: it with your friends.
Speaker 3: See you next week.