Filmmakers Sophie Compton and Reuben Hamlyn want to reclaim the online space for women in their new documentary on the misuse of deepfake technology.
By Sarah Grishpul
Imagine you received a message from a friend one day with a link to a porn site to which you discover that there are a bunch of pornographic videos with your face on them.
That is how directors Sophie Compton and Reuben Hamlyn’s documentary, Another Body, starts. In the film, we follow Taylor, a young college student whose life turns upside down after discovering someone has posted deepfake pornography, using her face, online.
Deepfakes are artificially generated footage created by running a large collection of images through AI software.
While many people may have encountered deepfakes through memes or silly videos of Nicolas Cage on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s body, at least 96 per cent of this technology has been utilized for pornographic content. The majority of these victims are nonconsenting women.
The documentary is a slow-burn thriller that guides the viewer through a situation every modern young woman fears. There is a constant sense of unease and dread as we see Taylor close off from the world while more deepfake videos of her are posted. It’s heartbreaking to witness this youthful, carefree girl slowly become undone by such an act of hate.
Throughout this documentary, we follow Taylor’s journey as she works relentlessly to seek justice for this egregious invasion of privacy. However, as the film hammers home, most countries don’t have proper online harassment laws surrounding this new technology.
Even in Canada, there are no criminal deepfake laws in place. It is also difficult to punish the creators of pornographic deepfakes as the perpetrator is often hiding behind an anonymous online identity.
The documentary is shot similarly to most found-footage films (picture Aneesh Chaganty’s 2018 film Searching), with many scenes shot from Taylor’s phone or laptop while capturing her reactions in vlogs, Zoom meetings or through social media sites and forums.
When initially developing the idea for this documentary, Compton and Hamlyn wanted to bring awareness to this growing issue that not many are aware of. In an interview with CanCulture, the pair discussed the ethics behind approaching Taylor and sharing her story without invading her space.
“By allowing her to self-record her story, she's the one who decides when the camera turns on and when the camera turns off, she decides when she wants to speak and when she doesn't and by sort of doing that, we provide her with control over how her story is told,” said Hamlyn. “It kind of makes her collaborator in the process more so than the junior typical documentary subject.”
Aside from giving Taylor control over her narrative, Hamlyn also mentioned that they wanted to reclaim the online platforms that had stripped so many women of their agency.
“We want to celebrate these online forms of communication and documentation, and so by recreating that in the style of the film, we're trying to put forward quite how powerful that can be as a mechanism of using your voice,” said Hamlyn.
The pair also utilized this AI tool to demonstrate how powerful this technology can be while also protecting Taylor’s identity, as it is revealed in the film that the face we’ve been staring at isn’t her actual face — but rather, a deepfake of another actress (Ava Breuer).
According to the filmmakers, deepfake technology isn’t inherently problematic. However, it becomes an issue when not used responsibly.
“They don't understand that this technology, when used to recreate a realistic-looking video, can be pretty much seamless,” said Compton. “And so by being able to use the technology in the film not just to protect our subjects, we also really can persuade the audience and clarify how terrifying the technology can be when misused.”
Compton and Hamlyn hope that this documentary will help bring awareness to this ongoing issue while destigmatizing the illusion of these online predators and addressing this kind of abuse and misogyny in our communities.
“The Internet is the most important public forum in human history, in my opinion, and the right answer is not to withdraw from it just to protect yourself from this,” said Hamlyn. “We need to find a way of making it safe for women to freely participate in online spaces.”
The documentary is part of their campaign #MyImageMyChoice meant to amplify the stories of survivors and advocate for stronger laws surrounding deepfake abuse. Compton says they started a petition to block these sites from promoting image abuse and email templates that people can send to political representatives.
“What we've really witnessed in Taylor's story is that if you persevere and keep investigating and reach out to people and find community, things can really shift,” said Compton.
“So, I hope that people sense the glimmer of opportunity and hope in that.”
Another Body will be playing at the Ted Rogers Hot Docs Cinema before streaming on CBC Gem on November 22nd.