Reimagining Consent: The Case of Deep-fake Porn
Instead of a check-box approach at the start, this project aims to enable digital consent as something which is ongoing, embodied, and negotiated over time. Using the case of deep-fake-porn (DFP), a form of gendered violence that is predominantly harming women, the project will focus on mitigating the non-consensual creation, exploitation, and distribution of DFP material.
Project description
The project is a pilot-study in a larger study. While the pilot focuses on understanding and influencing the perpetrator community, the larger project also aims to create combative techniques that enable women to protect their digital selves from being used non-consensually. The project illustrates an approach to innovation centred on perspectives from outside the mainstream.
Innovations in digital technology are calling into question the ways in which consent is understood and enacted. Typically, consent tends to take a checkbox approach at the start. By taking a feminist approach this project aims to enable consent as something which is ongoing, embodied and negotiated over time. Using the case of deep-fake-porn (DFP), a form of gendered violence that is predominantly harming women, the project will focus on mitigating the non-consensual creation, exploitation, and distribution of DFP material.
Research focus
Community of perpetrators
Media reports of women’s lives shattered by deep fake pornographic content that is created and distributed without their consent. It is becoming clear that such content is often created by a friend, or even an intimate partner. To develop mitigating design works targeting the creators of DFP, the project will develop a research methodology that will make use of AI tools alongside other research approaches to enable the safe and ethical mapping and tracking of community content, forums and techniques as well as social/cultural norms of interactions.
Mitigating technology
Finalise and test a reseach-through-design technology under development, “The Booth”, and use insights when designing interventions with perpetrators. “The Booth” aims to boost perpetrators’ empathy and draw attention to the risks and societal implications of deep fake porn, and thereby discourage the non-consensual creation, exploitation, and distribution of DFP material.
Researcher
Madeline Balaam is a Professor of Media Technology and Interaction Design. Her research is concerned with interaction design for health and wellbeing. She leads a research group of ten people.
