Actress’s deepfake raises questions about online gender-based violence
Abhishek Kumar, a journalist at the fact checking publication Alt News, said the viral deepfake video “is perfect enough for ordinary social media users to fall for it”
New Delhi: On Monday, a deepfake video of Telugu actor Rashmika Mandanna went viral on X, formerly Twitter, and multiple other social media platforms. In the video, her face had been spliced on top of a British-Indian woman, Zara Patel’s body.
In the now viral Twitter thread, Abhishek Kumar, a journalist at the fact checking publication Alt News, highlighted that the viral deepfake video “is perfect enough for ordinary social media users to fall for it”.
Mandanna tweeted, ”I feel really hurt to share this and have to talk about the deepfake video of me being spread online. Something like this is honestly, extremely scary not only for me, but also for each one of us who today is vulnerable to so much harm because of how technology is being misused. Today, as a woman and as an actor, I am thankful for my family, friends and well wishers who are my protection and support system. But if this happened to me when I was in school or college, I genuinely can’t imagine how could I ever tackle this. We need to address this as a community and with urgency before more of us are affected by such identity theft.”
Morphed photos and videos of women, especially famous women, being circulated online aren’t a new phenomenon. They have existed since the advent of the internet. With AI-based tools, what has changed is the ease, speed and finesse with which a layperson can make realistic deepfakes which both look and sound genuine.
There are multiple AI tools now available that can ”remove the clothes” from an uploaded image. In the last month alone, two separate incidents --- in US and Spain --- emerged where AI-generated naked images of tween and teenage girls were circulated in their local towns and schools. In both cases, the images were generated by minor boys using social media photographs posted by the girls.
On Twitter and Reddit, multiple accounts and subreddits exist where users routinely generate deepfakes of famous women, usually film actresses, engaging in pornographic acts.
“In terms of psychological impact, such an act causes fear amongst women and this kind of online violence deplatforms women from online spaces. By targetting women in this manner, not only does have an impact on mental health in terms of emotional and psychological stress, it can also have economic impact and cause women to lose their jobs because of perceived reputational harm,” Malavika Rajkumar, project associate at IT For Change, said.
But in this case, it is not just Mandanna who has been subjected to online gender-based violence; Patel too has been robbed of her agency as she is reduced to just her body.
“In most of these cases, as the content is amplified and goes viral, women are sexualised and thereby reduced to sexual objects leading to loss of bodily autonomy, privacy and bodily integrity. The fact that this is getting widely shared is also a result of toxic masculinity and patriarchy that is rampant online. The online-offline continuum means that the problems in the offline world are replicated online,” Rajkumar said.
Also Read: Kerala deepfake fraud case: Efforts on to nab accused from Gujarat, say cops
Does the law provide a remedy? To some extent
“There is an urgent need for a legal and regulatory framework to deal with deepfake in India,” Kumar tweeted.
The minister of state for electronics and information technology, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, quote tweeted Kumar’s thread to say, ”Under the IT rules notified in April, 2023 – it is legal obligation for platforms to -> ensure no misinformation is posted by any user AND ->ensure that when reported by any user or govt, misinformation is removed in 36 hrs -> If platforms do not comply with this, rule 7 will apply and platforms can be taken to court by aggrieved person under provisions of IPC”.
Chandrasekhar was referring to the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 which were amended in 2022 and 2023 to make it mandatory for all intermediaries, not just social media platforms, to make ”reasonable efforts” to ensure that users do not upload any content that ”deceives or misleads the addressee about the origin of the message or knowingly and intentionally communicates any misinformation or information which is patently false and untrue or misleading in nature”.
“Deepfakes would be covered under misinformation since the image is intended to deceive viewers about the person involved in the video/image,” Vrinda Bhandari, Delhi-based lawyer, told HT. Such content can be taken down within 36 hours only on receipt of a court order or on being notified by a government agency in line with the Shreya Singhal judgement of 2015, Bhandari explained. ”User complaints are not covered within the provision of this rule,” she said. “Under my reading of Rule 7, intermediaries would only lose safe harbour based on a decision by a court,” she said.
Rule 7 of the IT Rules defines what happens to an intermediary in case it does not comply with the rules.
But there is another provision under the IT Rules that can be used by the victims to get deepfakes taken down within 24 hours. Under Rule 3(2)(b), if an individual ”or any person on his behalf” makes a complaint to any intermediary about content which, amongst other things, “is in the nature of impersonation in an electronic form, including artificially morphed images of such individual”, the intermediary must do all that it can to remove such content.
“Social interactions change because of pervasiveness of online gender-based violence,” Rajkumar said.
