Fake Content, Harmful Emotions: The Influence of Being a Victim-Survivor of Sexualised Deepfakes on Women’s Aversive Emotions and Desire for Legal Action

Abstract Sexualised deepfakes involve using artificial intelligence to create fake sexually explicit material of an individual. Across three experimental studies, we tested the psychological impact of sexualised deepfakes on women. Studies 1 ( N = 65) and 2 ( N = 60) asked participants to rate their feelings of objectification and emotions towards being the victim-survivor of sexualised deepfakes, revenge pornography or a non-sexual control condition. In both studies, feelings of objectification and the emotions were higher in the sexualised deepfake and revenge pornography conditions than the control condition. No reliable significant differences in objectification and emotions between the sexualised deepfake and revenge pornography conditions were found. In Study 3 ( N = 626), women were randomly allocated to imagine themselves being the victim-survivor of a non-sexualised deepfake video (control condition), a non-nude deepfake video of them describing a sexual experience (non-nude sexual condition) or a nude deepfake video (nude sexual condition). The negative emotions were greater in the nude and non-nude conditions than the control condition. Disgust and anxiety/fear were also higher in the nude than non-nude condition. Moreover, we found evidence that women had greater feelings of anger and disgust for sexual than non-sexual deepfakes, thereby making them more willing to report the deepfake to the police. These studies demonstrate both the harmful emotional consequences of sexualised deepfakes and the role of these emotions in motivating action. As such, this research has important implications for protecting and supporting women victim-survivors of sexualised deepfakes.