Deepfake Bodies

The commodification of deepfake technology has led to large quantities of deceptive deepfakes featuring synthesized bodies, facial expressions and speeches. These can project light-hearted fantasies, but have also enabled rampant practices of online misogyny and sextortion—the act of harming people’s private lives or public careers by threatening to share nude or explicit images. Deepfake Bodies argues that these global technologies are being adopted as a cultural politics of sexual degradation with impacts on women, feminism and sexual and ethnic minorities.Rather than arguing for a banning of deepfake content by means of detection and censorship services, Katrien Jacobs commits to a nuanced analysis of massive data and online ethnography within mainland Chinese, Hong Kong, British and European cultures to reveal creative and political models of gender injustice and empowerment. Case studies include the impact of deepfakes on public figures, 'face-swapping' apps in China, and the creation of voice skins.