WEBVTT - The Story: Levittown Deepfakes 0:00:01.240 --> 0:00:04.200 Welcome to tech stuff. I'ma's veloscan and this is the 0:00:04.280 --> 0:00:07.960 story this week. Something quite prescient. Have you ever been 0:00:08.039 --> 0:00:11.000 deep faked? Or maybe this is just a new fear 0:00:11.320 --> 0:00:14.080 that photos of you end up online that are you 0:00:14.480 --> 0:00:18.920 but not really you? What do you do? For an 0:00:18.920 --> 0:00:23.520 increasing number of people, especially women, this is becoming a reality, 0:00:24.160 --> 0:00:26.279 so much so that a recent bill in Congress called 0:00:26.320 --> 0:00:29.000 the Take It Down Act has found some incredibly rare 0:00:29.040 --> 0:00:33.199 bipartisan support. The bill is sponsored by Republican Senator Ted 0:00:33.280 --> 0:00:37.800 Cruz and Democrat Senator Amy Klobuchar, making it illegal to 0:00:37.840 --> 0:00:41.280 post explicit deep fakes. Milania Trump has also been a 0:00:41.320 --> 0:00:45.240 vocal supporter. But the thing is it isn't law yet, 0:00:45.640 --> 0:00:49.200 and it might not be enough. A new podcast called 0:00:49.280 --> 0:00:54.360 Levittown from Bloomberg News and our company Kaleidoscope, takes listeners 0:00:54.360 --> 0:00:57.600 on a sort of cyber thriller for the AI age. 0:00:57.640 --> 0:00:59.760 It's the story of a group of young women in 0:00:59.800 --> 0:01:03.600 the suburbs of Long Island who find naked fakes of 0:01:03.640 --> 0:01:07.080 themselves online, and, when told there's nothing they can do 0:01:07.160 --> 0:01:11.360 about it, set out to catch the perpetrator. This ends 0:01:11.440 --> 0:01:14.360 up connecting them to a web of online vigilantes and 0:01:14.400 --> 0:01:18.520 cyber criminals taking advantage of a justice system not ready 0:01:18.600 --> 0:01:21.880 for the reality of AI. This week on text Stuff, 0:01:22.160 --> 0:01:24.720 we bring you the first episode in the series. If 0:01:24.800 --> 0:01:27.240 you like what you hear, jump over to the Levittown 0:01:27.280 --> 0:01:29.920 podcast feed and listen to the series in full. 0:01:31.319 --> 0:01:37.240 The series explores sexualized imagery involving miners and violence. Please 0:01:37.280 --> 0:01:50.760 take here when listening. Can we start from the beginning? 0:01:51.400 --> 0:01:52.680 How did this all start for you? 0:01:55.560 --> 0:02:04.040 So I can go back into it? Remember somehow all 0:02:04.120 --> 0:02:07.160 these pictures from my Instagram by Visco were all on 0:02:07.200 --> 0:02:14.040 this website. There was one picture of me in a 0:02:14.080 --> 0:02:18.480 bathing suit, well it was me in a bathing suit 0:02:19.680 --> 0:02:26.520 in one of my friend's backyards and I didn't have 0:02:26.520 --> 0:02:33.160 a bathing suit on anymore. And it was just me naked, 0:02:34.760 --> 0:02:38.959 well not me, but me with someone else's body parts 0:02:39.000 --> 0:02:49.880 on my body parts. It was just boobs and body 0:02:49.880 --> 0:02:56.080 parts completely nude that looked so much like my own body. 0:02:58.680 --> 0:03:02.480 There were so many different pictures from my social media 0:03:02.680 --> 0:03:10.440 on essentially a porn website. I was just trying to 0:03:10.560 --> 0:03:13.920 figure out exactly, like where is this coming from? Like 0:03:14.040 --> 0:03:17.800 how are they finding my stuff? I didn't let people 0:03:18.360 --> 0:03:22.560 follow me that I didn't know, so it was always 0:03:22.560 --> 0:03:24.280 in the back of my head like, oh, it's someone 0:03:24.280 --> 0:03:27.120 that I know, But how do you find out who 0:03:27.200 --> 0:03:33.160 that someone is when you know so many people from school, soccer, 0:03:34.000 --> 0:03:34.800 all these things. 0:03:37.960 --> 0:03:40.760 Did you even have any suspicions as to who it 0:03:41.000 --> 0:03:41.560 was back then? 0:03:43.160 --> 0:03:46.000 No, not at all. 0:03:46.680 --> 0:03:49.000 It was always like, why is this happening? 0:03:49.080 --> 0:03:49.840 Who is this? 0:04:09.880 --> 0:04:12.680 Kayla was twenty years old and living at home with 0:04:12.720 --> 0:04:16.360 her parents in a town that was once the picture 0:04:16.720 --> 0:04:21.480 of the American dream, a long Island suburb called Leavettown. 0:04:23.080 --> 0:04:27.120 We're driving around Leavittown. A lot of white picket fences, 0:04:27.279 --> 0:04:31.880 a lot of American flags. It has the feel of 0:04:32.000 --> 0:04:33.080 going back in time. 0:04:33.800 --> 0:04:37.480 This is Levittown, one of the most remarkable housing developments 0:04:37.520 --> 0:04:38.240 ever conceived. 0:04:38.920 --> 0:04:41.520 It's the kind of America that makes you think of 0:04:41.600 --> 0:04:47.640 the nineteen fifties cookie cutter single family houses. Like someone 0:04:47.720 --> 0:04:52.160 hit control C on the ideal suburban house and then 0:04:52.240 --> 0:04:57.200 pasted it over and over on street after street. 0:04:57.720 --> 0:04:59.960 The idea that came to a man named Bill Levitt 0:05:00.240 --> 0:05:03.159 this why not apply to the building of houses the 0:05:03.160 --> 0:05:05.760 same principles that have brought other American industries to there 0:05:05.760 --> 0:05:07.760 On Accel Peaks of efficiency and service. 0:05:08.160 --> 0:05:11.960 Levittown was built for veterans returning from World War II 0:05:12.800 --> 0:05:18.280 as the picture of white suburbia. Perfect houses, manicured. 0:05:17.680 --> 0:05:20.960 Lawns started here and there Throughout the huge area are 0:05:21.040 --> 0:05:24.400 shopping centers where every type of product or service is 0:05:24.440 --> 0:05:28.960 readily available Hue Stars five and Dimes Department Store. 0:05:33.640 --> 0:05:38.760 Today we often talk about the future as digital algorithms 0:05:38.800 --> 0:05:45.120 and codes, as the architecture of our lives. But back then, 0:05:45.560 --> 0:05:51.040 Levittown was the imagined future. It just feels like quite 0:05:51.760 --> 0:05:56.520 suburban and safe, you know, it feels like the kind 0:05:56.560 --> 0:06:01.320 of place that nothing really happens around here. And yet 0:06:01.600 --> 0:06:06.239 underneath the facade of perfect order, it's here I found 0:06:06.240 --> 0:06:10.279 a story unfolding of a group of women faced with 0:06:10.360 --> 0:06:15.440 a new reality none of them wanted, a technological reality 0:06:16.160 --> 0:06:22.320 spinning out of control. It's like, this is not the 0:06:22.440 --> 0:06:26.080 setting for a horror movie, and that's exactly what played out. 0:06:27.240 --> 0:06:31.159 But this isn't your average horror story, the kind where 0:06:31.160 --> 0:06:34.520 a group of teens are hunted down until there's only 0:06:34.600 --> 0:06:39.560 one left standing. In this story, they flip the script, 0:06:40.000 --> 0:06:46.680 band together and fight back alongside some unexpected global allies, 0:06:47.520 --> 0:06:53.120 forcing law enforcement and tech companies to sit up and 0:06:53.279 --> 0:07:08.919 take notice from iHeart podcasts, Bloomberg and Kaleidoscope. This is Livettown. 0:07:09.320 --> 0:07:23.280 I'm Olivia Carvill. Over the summer, our producer Julia Nutter, 0:07:23.360 --> 0:07:26.160 and I made the drive out to Long Island to 0:07:26.240 --> 0:07:28.480 meet Kayla at her family home. 0:07:31.600 --> 0:07:32.560 I can hear music. 0:07:37.280 --> 0:07:38.120 How are you nice? 0:07:38.880 --> 0:07:40.880 It's to see too. How are you feeling? 0:07:42.480 --> 0:07:43.800 Let me just do a quick levels check. 0:07:44.000 --> 0:07:45.520 Oh do you want me to put the bird in 0:07:45.560 --> 0:07:46.200 another room? 0:07:46.480 --> 0:07:48.040 I don't even hear the bird. 0:07:48.080 --> 0:07:48.480 The bird. 0:07:48.760 --> 0:07:53.120 Yeah, Kayla is like a firecracker. She's small but loud, 0:07:53.440 --> 0:07:56.880 with brightly colored hair. Every time I've seen her, her 0:07:56.960 --> 0:08:01.440 hair is a different color. She's covered in tattoos and piercings. 0:08:01.800 --> 0:08:03.680 I was like, oh, yeah, what kind of bird is that? 0:08:03.800 --> 0:08:06.480 A parakeet? So he likes to talk to himself a lot. 0:08:10.680 --> 0:08:13.680 Do you feel comfortable showing us where you were when 0:08:13.720 --> 0:08:18.000 you discovered the website? When you were showing it, yeah, 0:08:18.040 --> 0:08:21.760 it's a little messy. Kayla's twenty four now. When we 0:08:21.880 --> 0:08:24.600 visited her, she was living in the same house she 0:08:24.680 --> 0:08:25.200 grew up in. 0:08:26.120 --> 0:08:29.960 Well, I see all your plants and it's great, as 0:08:30.000 --> 0:08:30.520 you could tell. 0:08:30.560 --> 0:08:33.720 I love my books in high school. Kayla was an 0:08:33.760 --> 0:08:38.160 elite athlete and a girl who moved easily between friend groups. 0:08:38.679 --> 0:08:41.439 People make it seem like there's either a popular group 0:08:41.600 --> 0:08:43.800 or you know, so called nerds. 0:08:45.160 --> 0:08:46.160 I would like to say I was. 0:08:46.160 --> 0:08:48.680 In the middle of it because I hung out with 0:08:48.720 --> 0:08:51.280 a lot of the sports people who were considered popular. 0:08:51.640 --> 0:08:54.480 But I had my friends who we would just sit 0:08:54.559 --> 0:08:58.560 around and play video games, hang out, do funny things, 0:08:58.640 --> 0:09:09.240 and make videos of us doing stupid little things. I 0:09:09.280 --> 0:09:12.000 say this to my friends actually all the time. I 0:09:12.080 --> 0:09:14.719 may not dress like it, but my inner person is 0:09:14.800 --> 0:09:18.360 kind of emo. I listen to a lot of dark music. 0:09:18.480 --> 0:09:18.760 Now. 0:09:18.920 --> 0:09:21.280 I have the tattoos. 0:09:20.679 --> 0:09:24.760 All over, I have piercings all over, and I truly 0:09:24.920 --> 0:09:27.400 just like It's not like I like the color black. 0:09:27.600 --> 0:09:31.720 I just like I changed a lot. I have a 0:09:31.760 --> 0:09:33.560 really big book tattoo on my leg. 0:09:34.120 --> 0:09:38.920 I have a big wrap around plants because my whole 0:09:39.000 --> 0:09:42.200 leg is going to be things I love, and plants 0:09:42.280 --> 0:09:43.240 is another thing for me. 0:09:44.440 --> 0:09:48.520 This one, it's one of my favorites. It's tell Me 0:09:48.559 --> 0:09:49.400 About Tomorrow. 0:09:50.679 --> 0:09:53.200 Tell Me About Tomorrow is one of my favorite songs 0:09:53.200 --> 0:09:56.160 because whenever I'm in a depressive state or just not 0:09:56.280 --> 0:09:59.360 doing good, mentally, I play that song and it tells 0:09:59.360 --> 0:10:01.880 you to tell me about tomorrow, tell me about the 0:10:01.920 --> 0:10:03.679 next day that's going to go on in your life. 0:10:04.679 --> 0:10:09.760 When I was going through this situation, I was not 0:10:09.880 --> 0:10:14.200 mentally doing good at all, and it told me you 0:10:14.240 --> 0:10:18.439 will have tomorrow, and you can't have tomorrow. 0:10:20.480 --> 0:10:24.840 It sounds like a lot of the tattoos are important 0:10:24.840 --> 0:10:28.800 to you because they represent you moving forward or healing 0:10:29.000 --> 0:10:32.480 or getting over this situation as you described it. Do 0:10:32.520 --> 0:10:34.960 you feel comfortable getting into that now. 0:10:35.360 --> 0:10:35.680 Yes. 0:10:39.480 --> 0:10:43.120 I remember being in my bed, just laying down. It 0:10:43.200 --> 0:10:43.880 was lead at night. 0:10:44.840 --> 0:10:47.720 This was in March twenty twenty, at the onset of 0:10:47.800 --> 0:10:51.960 the COVID pandemic. She'd recently graduated from high school and 0:10:52.120 --> 0:10:53.840 was stuck at home with her parents. 0:10:54.440 --> 0:10:58.520 I was in that corner. My bad was up against 0:10:58.559 --> 0:11:02.360 the wall. I was just laying in the bed. 0:11:03.080 --> 0:11:05.920 I'm pretty sure I was on my phone, just scrolling 0:11:05.960 --> 0:11:08.160 through Instagram or something, or on Snapchat. 0:11:09.160 --> 0:11:12.560 She heard her dad walking up the stairs from the living. 0:11:12.360 --> 0:11:14.320 Room, says, I can always hear when someone comes up 0:11:14.360 --> 0:11:15.240 the stairs and he knocked. 0:11:15.280 --> 0:11:17.840 He always knocks on the door. So he knocked and 0:11:19.080 --> 0:11:20.080 just like walked right in. 0:11:21.320 --> 0:11:24.440 I thought automatically like I was in trouble or something. 0:11:24.920 --> 0:11:26.880 But then I could just like tell like he was 0:11:27.000 --> 0:11:31.520 just confused, and he was like a little hesitant to 0:11:31.600 --> 0:11:35.680 like come up to me. I could tell, and he 0:11:35.800 --> 0:11:37.240 was just like, what is this? 0:11:39.640 --> 0:11:41.640 What is this? What was he showing you? 0:11:42.840 --> 0:11:45.719 I think it was the website. 0:11:46.000 --> 0:11:49.439 It was the faked picture of her naked, and next 0:11:49.480 --> 0:11:53.520 to it a pole asking the site's users to rank 0:11:53.640 --> 0:11:58.160 what they wanted to do to her sexually. This next 0:11:58.160 --> 0:12:01.400 part is graphic, and it might be difficult to hear. 0:12:03.120 --> 0:12:11.400 It was. I always had trouble saying these parts. 0:12:12.600 --> 0:12:13.080 It was. 0:12:14.760 --> 0:12:21.320 Drink her piss, milk her, have her drink my piss, 0:12:21.880 --> 0:12:24.920 and there was something else, and I can't entirely remember 0:12:24.920 --> 0:12:25.760 what the other one was. 0:12:26.800 --> 0:12:29.200 So they were ranking what they wanted to do to 0:12:29.240 --> 0:12:29.880 you sexually. 0:12:30.160 --> 0:12:33.400 Yes, yeah. 0:12:33.520 --> 0:12:36.160 She kept scrolling and it got worse. 0:12:36.840 --> 0:12:39.319 You would see what they posted, like their nude pictures 0:12:39.440 --> 0:12:44.440 and jerking off and coming on our pictures, even like 0:12:44.520 --> 0:12:50.439 pictures of our pictures with their dicks there and the 0:12:50.520 --> 0:12:54.760 ejaculation there, and then there was like some like. 0:12:56.760 --> 0:13:01.120 Writings of like reaper. 0:13:07.520 --> 0:13:10.679 My dad was very confused. He asked me what this 0:13:10.960 --> 0:13:15.400 was and how did it get up there? And I 0:13:15.440 --> 0:13:19.200 did not know because I've never seen it before, which 0:13:19.240 --> 0:13:25.320 I obviously told him. 0:13:25.360 --> 0:13:28.120 So that's how we found out about the website. 0:13:39.679 --> 0:13:42.880 Kylas is Her dad is a big guy, big personality 0:13:43.080 --> 0:13:47.600 like her loud laugh. Back then, he was a police officer, 0:13:48.120 --> 0:13:51.600 a beat cop really, for the Nassau County Police Department. 0:13:52.320 --> 0:13:54.600 He didn't want to talk to us for this podcast, 0:13:55.200 --> 0:13:59.800 but he's really protective of his kids, which means he 0:14:00.040 --> 0:14:04.720 regularly googles their names, searching the Internet for anything related 0:14:04.760 --> 0:14:05.120 to them. 0:14:05.840 --> 0:14:11.280 For me, specifically, I was playing soccer and competitively, so 0:14:13.040 --> 0:14:16.000 when I was, you know, going to college and playing soccer, 0:14:16.040 --> 0:14:19.840 then he just got nervous when they search things. He 0:14:19.880 --> 0:14:24.440 doesn't want dumb to see things are wrong or you know, 0:14:24.800 --> 0:14:27.200 like exactly what we found. 0:14:28.360 --> 0:14:31.040 When he shows you the phone, what is the photograph 0:14:31.760 --> 0:14:34.640 on the phone that you're looking at? The specific photo 0:14:34.680 --> 0:14:36.240 that you first see. 0:14:36.480 --> 0:14:37.520 I'm almost passive. 0:14:37.600 --> 0:14:40.480 It was the one with the bikini taking off my 0:14:40.520 --> 0:14:45.360 body and it was just me naked, well not me, 0:14:45.600 --> 0:14:49.880 but me with someone else's body parts on my body 0:14:49.880 --> 0:14:56.640 parts that looked exactly like my own. 0:14:57.400 --> 0:15:00.920 Was there ever a moment even and a split seecond 0:15:00.960 --> 0:15:03.920 moment that you thought it was you naked, Yes. 0:15:04.520 --> 0:15:06.880 I definitely like at first, like I was like, oh 0:15:06.880 --> 0:15:08.600 my god, that's me, Like how did they get that? 0:15:08.680 --> 0:15:13.200 But then I was like, no, that's in my friend's backyard. 0:15:13.400 --> 0:15:16.720 Like I was obviously wearing a bikini, and I remember 0:15:16.720 --> 0:15:19.680 the bikini. It was a blue one and it was 0:15:19.800 --> 0:15:22.480 mesh a little bit. So that's why I would think 0:15:22.520 --> 0:15:26.560 it was so easy for them to completely alter the picture. 0:15:27.400 --> 0:15:33.200 But I just like instantly I was like, whoa, how 0:15:33.320 --> 0:15:37.080 how did they get that picture of me? Like I 0:15:37.120 --> 0:15:41.359 never took a picture like that. It was frightening how 0:15:41.880 --> 0:15:42.960 exact it looked. 0:15:44.840 --> 0:15:48.120 The website it was on was called come on printed 0:15:48.200 --> 0:15:52.480 pecks dot com, and it encouraged its members to do 0:15:52.640 --> 0:15:57.800 exactly what that title implies, to print out photos of 0:15:57.880 --> 0:16:02.280 girls and young women and estbate to them, and then 0:16:03.000 --> 0:16:06.760 to post a photo of the user's erection or ejaculation 0:16:07.480 --> 0:16:11.160 on top of that image. This is a practice they 0:16:11.280 --> 0:16:12.600 called tributing. 0:16:14.200 --> 0:16:17.320 To have to see my dad find all that, and 0:16:17.440 --> 0:16:23.360 like I don't know, like just not understanding what's going on. 0:16:23.520 --> 0:16:25.400 I didn't even know anything was going on. And then 0:16:25.440 --> 0:16:27.560 my dad just coming in and seeing all that, It's 0:16:27.640 --> 0:16:31.640 like nobody wants to see that, but like to have 0:16:31.760 --> 0:16:36.960 your dad see that, that's like not even uncomfortable, like 0:16:37.000 --> 0:16:41.440 that's not even the word for it, but just like unimaginable. 0:16:46.680 --> 0:16:49.320 I wish I could tell you that this website was 0:16:49.400 --> 0:16:52.720 tucked away in the dark web. We users needed to 0:16:52.840 --> 0:16:56.720 download a special browser or slink through some other secret 0:16:56.840 --> 0:17:01.320 cyber door. But it wasn't. It was just out in 0:17:01.360 --> 0:17:07.119 the open. Kayla was out in the open too. Postings 0:17:07.160 --> 0:17:10.480 on the site included her real name, which is how 0:17:10.520 --> 0:17:14.520 her dad found it. Sometimes the images posted to the 0:17:14.560 --> 0:17:20.199 website were actual unaltered photos, revenge porn type stuff, but 0:17:20.359 --> 0:17:24.760 often the original photos were taken from innocent social media 0:17:24.840 --> 0:17:29.920 posts like Kayla's, and then the site's users turned those 0:17:29.960 --> 0:17:39.120 images into non consensual pornography, often with underage subjects. This 0:17:39.200 --> 0:17:42.800 type of photo manipulation was new to Kayla, but it 0:17:42.880 --> 0:17:46.120 wasn't new to me. I've been starting to see more 0:17:46.160 --> 0:17:49.600 of it over the past few years. I've been reporting 0:17:49.680 --> 0:17:53.679 on big tech and social media platforms what they're doing 0:17:53.880 --> 0:17:57.520 or not doing to prevent harm to kids, what guardrails 0:17:57.560 --> 0:18:00.920 they're putting up to stop exactly this kind of thing. 0:18:01.040 --> 0:18:05.399 From happening, and images like these were starting to multiply 0:18:05.600 --> 0:18:11.760 with shocking speed alongside the rise of artificial intelligence. I 0:18:11.880 --> 0:18:15.040 kept hearing more and more about the dark side of 0:18:15.080 --> 0:18:21.000 this new technology, about deep fakes, altered videos online known 0:18:21.040 --> 0:18:21.920 as deep. 0:18:21.680 --> 0:18:23.440 Fakes, the rise of deep fakes. 0:18:23.240 --> 0:18:25.560 Computer generated videos known as deep fakes. 0:18:25.600 --> 0:18:28.840 Deep fake videos make people appear to say things they 0:18:28.880 --> 0:18:30.600 never did or never would. 0:18:30.880 --> 0:18:32.680 It's getting harder and harder to trust our. 0:18:32.640 --> 0:18:33.680 Eyes and airs. 0:18:34.480 --> 0:18:37.560 When I first heard about the Leavettown case, I knew 0:18:37.600 --> 0:18:40.359 the reporting was going to take me to some uncomfortable 0:18:40.880 --> 0:18:45.520 but important places, from the rise of generative AI to 0:18:45.600 --> 0:18:51.600 the explosion of deep fakes to child sexual abuse material online. 0:18:51.880 --> 0:18:53.960 I also knew that it was going to be really 0:18:54.000 --> 0:18:57.480 hard to find the victims and dive into this website 0:18:57.720 --> 0:19:01.439 on my own, so I turned to my colleague for help, 0:19:02.200 --> 0:19:05.480 Maggie Murphy. She's a technology reporter at Bloomberg. 0:19:06.920 --> 0:19:09.280 At the time, I remember I was reporting on this 0:19:09.440 --> 0:19:12.399 new generative AI tool that people were using to create 0:19:12.480 --> 0:19:16.479 child sexual abuse material. I typically write about people who 0:19:16.600 --> 0:19:20.560 hide on the fringes of the Internet, like teenage hackers 0:19:20.720 --> 0:19:25.200 extorting global businesses, or cyber criminals using AI to scam people. 0:19:26.080 --> 0:19:28.520 Not that long ago when I started on this beat, 0:19:28.920 --> 0:19:31.679 deep fakes weren't that easy to make and kind of 0:19:31.720 --> 0:19:34.320 always had to tell. If you looked at them long 0:19:34.440 --> 0:19:37.640 enough you would notice something was off, yet they caught 0:19:37.680 --> 0:19:38.200 your attention. 0:19:38.480 --> 0:19:42.159 With AI, there has been so much innovation, but in the. 0:19:42.200 --> 0:19:46.040 Last few years there have been rapid breakthroughs and machine learning. 0:19:46.080 --> 0:19:49.840 Amazon investing up to four billion dollars in startup andthropic as. 0:19:49.760 --> 0:19:53.639 You reportedly investing ten billion dollars in open AI. 0:19:53.800 --> 0:19:56.600 That is and truly hundreds of millions of dollars has 0:19:56.640 --> 0:20:00.040 flowed into image generating software powered by AI. 0:20:00.600 --> 0:20:04.600 Microsoft, Amazon, you name it. They are all actively investing 0:20:05.000 --> 0:20:07.840 in young AI startups because you're trying. 0:20:08.080 --> 0:20:10.560 That has made it a lot cheaper and easier to 0:20:10.600 --> 0:20:14.520 make convincing photos or videos of pretty much anything you 0:20:14.520 --> 0:20:19.080 can think of. Now, there are billions upon billions of 0:20:19.119 --> 0:20:23.160 deep fake images out there, and this probably won't surprise you, 0:20:23.840 --> 0:20:27.479 but the vast, vast majority, by one estimate, more than 0:20:27.560 --> 0:20:33.119 ninety percent of all deep fake imagery is pornographic. Typically, 0:20:33.320 --> 0:20:35.800 people who have had their image turned into porn have 0:20:35.960 --> 0:20:39.879 not consented to having their faces, bodies, or voices morphed 0:20:39.880 --> 0:20:43.080 in this way. A lot of people don't even know 0:20:43.200 --> 0:20:46.879 that these images of themselves exist. But as Olivia and 0:20:46.920 --> 0:20:50.960 I learned, Kayla's dad had found this website in a 0:20:51.000 --> 0:20:54.680 regular search of her name, and now he and Kayler 0:20:54.800 --> 0:20:55.880 knew it was there. 0:20:57.240 --> 0:21:00.880 Seeing what people had to say about my boy as 0:21:01.119 --> 0:21:05.760 the pictures were like when I'm what thirteen fourteen, I 0:21:05.800 --> 0:21:09.720 think I instantly cried. I was just like I think 0:21:09.760 --> 0:21:13.360 I remember, kind of like stating more to myself than 0:21:13.400 --> 0:21:16.159 anybody else, like why is this happening to me? Like 0:21:16.359 --> 0:21:19.639 what is going on? Like is this even real life? 0:21:20.840 --> 0:21:26.600 I felt betrayed by my body because it felt so real, 0:21:27.600 --> 0:21:30.480 Like the pictures just seemed so real. 0:21:31.760 --> 0:21:34.320 The website, to us, is also encouraged each other to 0:21:34.359 --> 0:21:39.200 comment on the images and even harass the person being pictured. 0:21:39.680 --> 0:21:44.520 It's unimaginable to think that people can even say how gross, 0:21:44.560 --> 0:21:46.640 like to tell you to rape. 0:21:46.359 --> 0:21:48.440 Me or milk me. 0:21:49.760 --> 0:21:53.280 I remember a lot of mine was with my braces, 0:21:53.320 --> 0:21:56.040 because I had braces until I was in eleventh grade, 0:21:56.840 --> 0:22:01.600 and then I had some pimples, and I'd see people 0:22:02.080 --> 0:22:07.800 saying that they loved my brastface and my pimples on 0:22:07.840 --> 0:22:09.400 my face they like, I'm younger. 0:22:13.160 --> 0:22:17.160 Did you actively search through the website for all photos 0:22:17.200 --> 0:22:19.920 of you and look at other photos on there and 0:22:20.280 --> 0:22:22.480 what the people were saying, or did you just could 0:22:22.480 --> 0:22:23.560 you just not look at it at all? 0:22:24.520 --> 0:22:24.600 No. 0:22:24.760 --> 0:22:26.360 I constantly looked at it. 0:22:26.520 --> 0:22:30.920 I was searching to see if there were new pictures 0:22:30.920 --> 0:22:31.920 that would be uploaded. 0:22:33.320 --> 0:22:38.480 After learning about the website, Kayla's biggest question was who 0:22:38.520 --> 0:22:43.880 did this? Who went through the trouble of scraping her 0:22:43.920 --> 0:22:48.120 pictures from social media, editing them to make her look naked, 0:22:48.840 --> 0:22:52.560 and then posting them on the site asking others to 0:22:52.640 --> 0:22:57.520 harass her. She wanted it to stop, so she took 0:22:57.520 --> 0:23:00.240 a break from Visco, a photo sharing app. 0:23:00.760 --> 0:23:03.119 Because I started to notice that was the main place 0:23:03.200 --> 0:23:05.040 that they took my pictures from. 0:23:05.720 --> 0:23:09.280 I mean, for you, you can't unsee that that's your 0:23:09.320 --> 0:23:12.640 body and that's someone putting it out there naked on 0:23:12.680 --> 0:23:16.439 this website. How do you survive and how do you cope? 0:23:18.040 --> 0:23:21.879 I quite literally just put in the back of my 0:23:21.960 --> 0:23:26.040 head and moved on and just did not think about it. 0:23:26.240 --> 0:23:31.639 Try not to think about it. We're still on lockdown, 0:23:31.760 --> 0:23:34.199 so I was stuck with my thoughts a lot. But 0:23:34.240 --> 0:23:37.320 I was also stuck with my family. We all kind 0:23:37.320 --> 0:23:39.159 of just put it in the back of our heads 0:23:39.200 --> 0:23:43.720 and essentially basically pretended that it never happened. 0:23:46.080 --> 0:23:49.320 Kayla didn't tell anyone about it, not even her friends, 0:23:50.200 --> 0:23:52.280 though her father reached out to his colleagues at the 0:23:52.320 --> 0:23:57.120 Natau County Police Department. He wanted to know what could 0:23:57.160 --> 0:23:59.480 they do to help Kayla. 0:24:00.000 --> 0:24:02.679 My dad did seek advice to his buddies at work. 0:24:03.000 --> 0:24:05.840 He did ask if there was anything that they could do, 0:24:05.960 --> 0:24:09.560 but his buddies really didn't know how to go about 0:24:09.560 --> 0:24:13.760 it because it's so hard to trace, like those types 0:24:13.800 --> 0:24:18.520 of websites when they're all anonymous and they're essentially a 0:24:18.560 --> 0:24:21.400 porn website, so it's really hard to trace those back 0:24:21.440 --> 0:24:23.800 to the original owner or anything like that. 0:24:24.840 --> 0:24:28.080 Bear in mind, this was happening in twenty twenty, when 0:24:28.080 --> 0:24:31.680 the term deep fakes wasn't as widespread or recognized as 0:24:31.680 --> 0:24:34.840 it is now, and there weren't any laws federal or 0:24:34.880 --> 0:24:37.960 in New York State at this time to prevent faked 0:24:38.000 --> 0:24:40.080 pornographic images of real people. 0:24:40.960 --> 0:24:43.959 I didn't really know what there was to do. After 0:24:44.320 --> 0:24:47.560 my dad already tried to contact the police department and 0:24:47.640 --> 0:24:51.200 his buddies and them just telling us that, like, there 0:24:51.200 --> 0:24:55.360 really was not much that they can do going through 0:24:55.359 --> 0:24:59.760 a complete and trying to go through all the steps 0:24:59.760 --> 0:25:00.359 that took. 0:25:00.400 --> 0:25:03.920 I just don't think I was strong enough at that moment. 0:25:07.240 --> 0:25:11.800 And there's more time passed. Can you describe how your 0:25:11.880 --> 0:25:15.040 feelings about that website and those photos changed. 0:25:16.240 --> 0:25:16.920 I think. 0:25:19.240 --> 0:25:22.560 After some time I stopped looking at the website put 0:25:22.600 --> 0:25:25.720 in the back of my head, but it completely altered 0:25:25.760 --> 0:25:29.480 the way that I thought about my body. And there's 0:25:29.480 --> 0:25:33.120 some thing called body dysmorphia. Your brain alters the way 0:25:33.160 --> 0:25:36.800 that you look at your body, and I completely went 0:25:36.840 --> 0:25:37.200 through that. 0:25:38.240 --> 0:25:40.560 I used to feel so confident about it because I 0:25:40.600 --> 0:25:41.280 was an athlete. 0:25:41.359 --> 0:25:44.600 I felt so in tune with my body, and then 0:25:44.640 --> 0:25:53.120 I completely changed. I started having eating issues and wasn't able. 0:25:52.920 --> 0:25:54.280 To eat full meals. 0:25:54.480 --> 0:25:59.000 I would feel sick after eating. I couldn't even eat 0:25:59.040 --> 0:26:01.080 three bites of food. I would eat two bites and 0:26:01.119 --> 0:26:05.119 feel absolutely disgusted in what I'm eating and disgusted in 0:26:05.119 --> 0:26:09.680 my body for wanting food. It completely changed just who 0:26:09.720 --> 0:26:12.680 I was as a person. I completely got depressed and 0:26:13.400 --> 0:26:14.720 just wasn't myself. 0:26:16.600 --> 0:26:19.440 And that's where the story could have ended. With Kayla's 0:26:19.440 --> 0:26:22.879 faked pictures still online, and her and her dad not 0:26:22.960 --> 0:26:27.320 able to do anything about it. Her small, safe, suburban 0:26:27.359 --> 0:26:32.600 world turned upside down. But ten months later, Kayla's phone rang. 0:26:33.320 --> 0:26:34.840 I got a call when I was working at my 0:26:34.920 --> 0:26:39.320 old job at a clothing store. It was around New 0:26:39.400 --> 0:26:45.480 Year's Eve. I remember it was like seven forty and 0:26:45.640 --> 0:26:49.359