Searching for Mr. Deepfakes: ‘The Most Dangerous Man on the Internet’ [Part 1]

**Laurie Segall** (0:00)
Before we get started, this episode contains talk of sexual abuse and suicide. Please take care while listening.

**Joanne Chew** (0:10)
It still feels incredibly weird to tell the story. Hearing it come out of my mouth, this is crazy. This sounds like some crazy movie that you would watch on Lifetime or Netflix.

**Laurie Segall** (0:21)
Joanne Chew reached out to me after I posted on social media about an investigation I was conducting.
She wanted to tell me her story.
It was about something she'd found online that made her feel violated, fearful and powerless.

**Joanne Chew** (0:36)
I was just bored one evening and I'm just going to Google my name and see what comes up. And so I typed it in and I was just like, okay, the first few listings of my website or my IMDB page. And then I kept scrolling down and then I said, what, what, what, what, what is this?

**Laurie Segall** (0:50)
Joanne found herself scrolling past dozens of listings on porn sites with her name and her face. Sexually explicit photos and videos of her doing things she'd never done and had never thought of doing.

**Joanne Chew** (1:03)
It's like my face on very disturbing and graphic content. I apologize if it's too graphic, but it's, you know, Joanne Chew slut whore or Joanne Chew impregnated by five black men, something along the lines of that. So I was, I was like, I can't look, I don't want to look at this. I just can't.

**Laurie Segall** (1:24)
Joanne works in events in the LA area, but she's also a visual artist and an actor.
She's gotten some commercials and TV show roles, but you probably wouldn't recognize her on the street from anything you've watched on Netflix her lifetime.
Someone just found images of Joanne online and used AI Deepfake technology to recreate her likeness in pornographic photos and videos.

**Joanne Chew** (1:45)
I have like less than 3,000 followers, but it doesn't matter if you're famous or you're not. Just looking at Mr. Deepfakes, it's like they have a whole alphabetized database. They probably have content on every single actor or actress out there. It doesn't make it okay.

**Laurie Segall** (2:00)
Mr. Deepfakes is why Joanne contacted me. I was investigating the site, which at the time was the largest deep fake porn site on the Internet. When you look at it, you do see names and faces you probably know.
But here was Joanne, a regular person whose level of fame or followers didn't even come close to celebrity status, and she was being targeted by deepfakes. When Joanne asked around, the response she got was that deepfake porn was almost to be expected the more success you had.

**Joanne Chew** (2:30)
I told a couple of my other actress friends and they model, and some of them have a lot more followers than I do. They have a bigger platform. They are higher up on the food chain.
And I talked to them and they said, unfortunately, this is going to happen the further you go in your career. But if you want, just go ahead and post on your social media saying something along the lines of, this is what I found. This is not me. This is not something that I would ever do. If you see something, it's fake because it's just at least it's out there. On the record, you're speaking up against this. Should people find this online? Because at one point when I typed in my name, my stuff wasn't coming up first anymore. It was all of this content that's damaging to your reputation.

**Laurie Segall** (3:11)
Joanne followed the advice, but it didn't stop the videos from appearing on MrDeepfakes and other porn sites.

**Joanne Chew** (3:17)
The content was multiplying. There was on one particular website, there was an album of just me and it was close to 2,000 photos and videos.

**Laurie Segall** (3:27)
It gets worse for Joanne. The person posting these videos, he contacts her.
He starts sending her multiple messages on social media, even calling her by her childhood nickname, Jo. Now, this is just one example of a message Joanne received, and we're going to use AI to read these messages.

**SPEAKER_3** (3:45)
I made up your personality and surrounded it with AI flesh. I am a real man that desires your body and isn't afraid to say so. Not your real one though. That one is old and faded, but your AI body is forever young, Jo.
I am making you immortal.

**Joanne Chew** (4:05)
I just found it really creepy that he was doing that, and it was making me question, is this somebody that I know? If it is someone I know, are we in any danger? Are they going to look up where my mom lives or something? Because that's what my main concern was.