Woman mortified after discovering a ‘sexualised’ deepfake picture of her on a stranger’s phone at a bar – as bloke’s ‘joke’ explanation backfires

A 29-year-old woman has told how she discovered a group of strangers at a pub had secretly taken a picture of her and turned it into an explicit deepfake image. 

Jade and her friend were at a bar at Scarborough Beach, about 12km from Perth’s CBD, on Friday night, sitting next to a group of young male friends. 

The two groups struck up a ‘friendly’ chat before one of the men secretly photographed Jade, then used AI to create a deepfake image of her appearing to hook up with one of the strangers. 

‘For some reason, us being friendly to them, opened up an invitation for them to take a photo of me, put it into AI and then alter it into sexualised content,’ she said.

‘The picture looked like I was making out with one of those men. They showed me because they thought it was funny, they thought it was a joke. Initially I brushed it off.’

In hindsight, she realised just how ‘appalling’ the situation was.

Jade told the Daily Mail: ‘It wasn’t until afterwards that I really processed what had happened. These were complete strangers.

‘They took a photo of me without my knowledge and then used AI to turn that image into something sexual for their own entertainment. That was the moment it became much bigger to me than a group of men behaving badly on a night out.

‘AI now means someone can take an ordinary photograph of you and within minutes, create something sexual, degrading or completely fabricated that looks realistic.

‘You don’t have to pose for it. You don’t have to send anyone an intimate photo. You don’t even have to know the person creating it. That is frightening.’

The 29-year-old said she realised her first reaction was to dismiss what happened. She wished she’d spoken up about it the moment it happened. 

‘What disturbed me almost as much as what happened was realising that my first instinct had been to minimise it rather than recognise that my consent had been completely removed from the situation,’ she explained. 

After calling out the men’s behaviour on social media, one of the friends sent Jade a message to apologise, confirming he had deleted all traces of the AI-generated snap.

‘I didn’t want you to feel that way, clearly wasn’t a joke to you at all and I see that now. Just so you know I deleted the picture as soon as I took it. It was meant to be a funny joke of my friend so I am sorry that happened,’ the man said in a private message to Jade.

‘It should have never happened. I made the AI picture to show him as a joke because we have a running joke with him and his girlfriend but that was wrong of me and you didn’t deserve any of that. From the bottom of my heart, I am sorry about all this.’

However, Jade said she didn’t find the ‘joke’ amusing. 

‘A joke is something everyone gets to laugh at. If your joke requires secretly photographing someone and using technology to sexualise them without their consent, the person you’re laughing at isn’t part of the joke,’ she said. 

‘And with AI, “just a joke” can become something much more serious incredibly quickly. We are dealing with technology that is advancing faster than most people understand. 

‘The intention might be a five-minute laugh between friends, but the potential consequences for the person depicted can extend far beyond those five minutes.’

Jade has since reported the matter to the bar and police.

She hopes that by sharing her experience publicly, men will ‘understand that women are not content’ for their own entertainment. 

‘AI doesn’t suddenly remove the need for consent,’ she said. 

‘There was a real person sitting at that table. I wasn’t a photograph on the internet or a character in a joke between friends. I was a woman they didn’t know who was simply existing in a public place.

‘The scary thing about AI is how far something like this could potentially go. What starts as a photo taken across a room can become a sexualised image. That image can be saved, shared, altered again or posted online.’

Jade said the ‘scary’ situation made her realise AI technology was moving faster than society’s understanding of the boundaries around consent. 

‘There needs to be a much clearer understanding of what protections exist, where the gaps are and what consequences apply when AI is used to sexually exploit or humiliate another person,’ she said. 

‘Because this technology isn’t going away. It’s going to become more accessible and more convincing. And that’s why I think we need to have this conversation now, rather than waiting until something much worse happens.’

She said women often downplay or ignore behaviour that makes them uncomfortable or violates their boundaries rather than confronting it.  

‘Women have been conditioned for generations to minimise certain behaviour, laugh it off and move on,’ Jade said.

‘I don’t want the next generation of women to be conditioned to say “boys will be boys” and I don’t want the next generation of men to grow up believing that technology gives them permission to violate somebody else’s consent. 

‘AI may be new. Respect isn’t.’

For anyone thinking about using AI to create inappropriate content, Jade urged them to, ‘Ask yourself whether you would be comfortable watching somebody do the same thing to your sister, your partner, your best friend or your daughter.’