Powerless in Porn: Twitch streamer says 'there's no moving on' after deepfake scandal

Video and words by Sam Leader, ITV News' Here's The Story

A Twitch streamer who publicly discovered she was on a deep-fake porn website says she is “living with the consequences” of revenge porn for a choice she never even made.

Twitch is an online streaming platform that is popular amongst gamers and content creators, which allows users to have one-to-one on-screen interactions with their fans or followers. 

Sweet Anita, a prominent streamer with millions of followers, was alerted to the fact that she might have been deep faked into pornography after a stream on Twitch went viral. 

Another streamer called Brandon Ewing, who goes by the username Atrioc, switched website tabs during a live stream and viewers saw a URL which led to a page containing other prominent streamers deep faked into adult content. 

Atrioc later apologised on his stream and tweeted to say he was looking into paying for the women’s legal costs to get the deepfake’s taken down. 

But for Sweet Anita she was only just coming to terms with what she had seen – and how it could have consequences for the rest of her life.

"There isn't any moving on from it. This is just out there forever now. This is just an extra aspect that I will have to deal with, and there's no taking it back.

"If I in 20 years time try to get a job doing something important to me and somebody finds a porn video of me and they have no context, they're more likely to fire me or not hire me, than ask me to explain myself."

Deepfake porn is the practice of using an image of a person's face and digitally manipulating it on to real life adult content.

The results are terrifyingly realistic. 

Sweet Anita added "since this is so indistinguishable from reality it has all the same consequences as revenge porn".

The streamer, who often opens up about her Tourettes syndrome on her stream, said the incident has "heightened all of the security issues [she] was already facing".

"When people think you're a sex worker, people think it's okay to touch you. They think they're entitled to hurt you.

"You deal with the stigma of the world and being devalued by it. You lose all the protection of society. And so now I will be living those consequences for a choice I never made."

A study by Sensity AI found that in 2018 96% of deepfakes on the internet were pornographic. 

But Henry Ajder, a deepfake and generative artificial intelligence expert, says that the problem has got "significantly worse".

Expert Henry Ajder explains how deepfakes have evolved

"The space has exploded in terms of the amount of content being created and the ease of which individuals can create that content."

Henry added that deepfakes to the point of "we can't believe what we see anymore" is "a little way off" but ultimately it is coming.

Distributing deepfake pornography without someone's consent is currently a criminal offence in Scotland but not in England or Wales. 

New regulation should be included in the upcoming Online Safety Bill but Professor Clare McGlynn, who specialises in the legal regulation of pornography, sexual violence and online abuse says that might not be enough. 

“Many people don't know who has created or distributed the deepfake porn of them, so the criminal law is not something they would be able to use”. 

Professor McGlynn argues that is why new laws need to put pressure on online platforms to take “this form of abuse seriously, because that's how we'd actually reduce the prevalence”. 

But Sweet Anita doesn't think changing the law will make much of a difference to the way women are being treated online.

"Frankly you can change the law, but the law won't change anything until the culture does."

Want a quick and expert briefing on the biggest news stories? Listen to our latest podcasts to find out What You Need To Know