Megan Thee Stallion Fights Back Tears During Hot Girl Summer Tour After Pornographic DeepFake AI Video Released Online
By Phoebe Ann Brooks
Photo credit: Eskil Olaf Vestre // Flickr
Last week, a deepfake pornographic video portraying Megan Thee Stallion in sexually explicit circumstances was released online.
Megan Thee Stallion is the latest celebrity to be targeted with a non-consensual, sexually explicit, AI-generated deepfake video.
NBC News reported that the video has been viewed tens of thousands of times and reposted by multiple accounts on X.
An X spokesperson responded saying that the platform is now “proactively removing this content” as it violates X’s rules, which “prohibit the sharing of non-consensual intimate media”.
Deepfake is a term used to describe digital media which is generated using AI (Artificial Intelligence) or other digital, audio, or visual manipulation software.
A new trend called ‘face-swaps’ has emerged, where celebrity figures, predominantly women, have their images superimposed over pornography or sexually explicit images without giving consent.
Deepfakes are extremely damaging and remove consent and control of a person's image and likeness. They are increasingly being weaponised against women as a form of sexual abuse and humiliation.
In 2020, Vox shared a report by research group Deeptrace, which found that ninety-six percent of deepfakes online are pornographic in nature.
Whilst not explicitly responding to the video, Megan Thee Stallion posted on X: “It’s really sick how yall go out of the way to hurt me when you see me winning. Yall going too far, Fake ass shit. Just know today was your last day playing with me and I mean it”.
Following the post on X, Megan Thee Stallion appeared to get emotional during her performance of ‘Cobra’, as seen in video footage from one concert goer.
‘Cobra’ is a song that details the rapper’s emotional struggles and suicidal ideation after the deaths of her parents and grandmother. Lyrics include:
“Breakin’ down and I had the whole world watchin’ / But the worst part is really who watched me / Every night I cried, I almost died / And nobody close tried to stop it.”
Megan Thee Stallion is not the first woman who has been subjected to this abuse. Singer Taylor Swift has also been a victim, as has Marvel’s Xochitl Gomez, who was just seventeen at the time.
Currently, there is little protection or punishment against deepfake videos. Individuals typically use burner accounts to publish content, and it is very difficult for platforms to react in time to prevent sharing and downloading the content.