Deepfake porn is traumatic for those targeted, experts say, and is increasing, but remains a legal grey area. Photo: 123RF
An increasing number of New Zealand students are being victimised by deepfake pornography, and legal grey area means help can be hard to find
Artificial Intelligence has gone bad in our classrooms.
A new trend is emerging called pornographic deepfakes, created by students, of students. It's increasing. And it's devastating.
"They look real... whilst the individual knows they are not... they are pretty accurate, and this brings a sense of shame and embarrassment to the victim, and they don't want to reconnect back in school because they think everyone is talking about them, so it's incredibly challenging for students from a mental health perspective," Secondary Principals Association President Vaughan Couillault tells The Detail.
Put simply, pornographic deepfakes are a form of online bullying using A.I.
How they work is simple: deepfakes create a sexual image of a person - in this case a student, normally female - doing or saying things they have not said or done.
"It's gone from zero to many, very quickly, so it is getting worse. Is it an epidemic right now? No. But is it getting easier for someone who is tech savvy to do it? Then yes," Couillault says.
"There have already been hundreds of people affected by deepfake imagery that isn't them, and they're hurt and broken and may not have the chance to get the support they need to get back to fully functioning. It can have life-long implications for the person targeted."
Sex therapist and parent consultant Jo Robertson from Makes Sense, an organisation advocating for a safer digital space for children, tells The Detail it is mainly young females who are targeted, and many do not want to report it to the police.
"We have got image-based sexual abuse of women and girls, and it is in the classroom. They will most likely keep it a secret. They don't like going to the police about it or making more of a deal of it or gaining more attention.
"But it is exactly the same [as] if they received in-person sexual abuse. In society we tend to put it at a lower grade... but there is no hierarchy in trauma... and that's absolutely the case here. Just because it's online doesn't mean it's less real or less painful. And it hangs over them, sometimes for much longer than in-person abuse."
When it comes to legal protection, the area is grey, she says.
"It's not really clear in the Harmful Digital Communications Act if those images need to be realistic or if they can be created, so it's ambiguous. And when it's not clear, people can fall between the cracks."
The act regulates the occurrences and impacts of issues such as online bullying, harassment, revenge porn, and other forms of digital abuse and intimidation. In 2022, the act was amended, adding "intimate visual recording" being posted without consent as a form of harmful communication.
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