Putting a real face on deepfake porn

For Taylor Klein, It starts with a strange Facebook message from a friend. A Pornhub link. She doesn’t open it. Must be spam, she suspects. “I think you were hacked?” She replies. No. Her buddy insists the link is real. She clicks and her nightmare begins.

Another body, directed by Sophie Compton and Reuben Hamlyn, begins with Klein realizing she has been duped into pornography; Someone used editing software to put their faces on porn actors’ bodies, and now those clips are all over the internet. The film follows Klein as she tries to figure out who did this to her and what she can do to stop them. An all too timely documentary is being released today. As WIRED reported earlier this week, non-consensual deepfake porn has skyrocketed in recent years, with hundreds of thousands of videos easily discoverable through Google and Microsoft’s search platforms.

This rise in deepfake porn is made possible by a new wave of AI editing tools available online — tools that Compton and Hamlyn incorporate into their documentary. We won’t reveal how this works here, but suffice it to say: Another body brilliantly highlights how deepfake technology can distort our perception of each other. It’s about putting a human face on something that many dismiss as not “real.”

The opening scene shows a close-up of Klein’s eye as she watches a fake version of herself on a screen. It’s an intimate beginning that clearly expresses the goal of the film. Another body wants the viewer to imagine themselves in Klein’s position and feel the disorientation and horror that comes with the realization that one’s image can be manipulated to do things one would never do. In addition, it keeps the view of Klein in the first half hour and uses every opportunity to make her feel like an everyman. After the intro, viewers are shown photos from Klein’s childhood. In a voiceover, she describes her love of numbers, technology and rules, as if she wanted to remind the audience of her innate wholeness. (“We’re all a bunch of nerds,” she sums it up.)

The directors further anchor Klein’s perspective by filming a series of interviews as if the viewer were privately chatting with her over FaceTime. At one point there is a scene where the cameraman makes Klein a coffee and brings it to her in bed, giving the viewer the feeling that he is the one handing her the cup. This part is a little cheesy, but it’s hard to leave this movie without feeling like you protected Klein, even if she turns out to be the most protective person.

Klein soon discovers that she is not the only person in her social circle who has been targeted by such a campaign, and the film focuses on several other women who have had eerily similar experiences. They share resources and reluctantly do the investigative work needed to get the police’s attention.

Another body is essentially a story about how dangerously the justice system is lagging behind technology, and how victims of deepfake porn are often forced into the dual roles of detective and lawyer as they work to protect themselves and prevent others from similar situations be harmed in some way. When Klein describes how difficult it was to get the police to take her situation seriously, the failure becomes clear to the viewer. “The detective said strange things to me like, ‘Well, I need to look closely at these videos to make sure it’s you,'” she says. “He asked, ‘What have you done to make someone do this to you?'”