“No moving on” from explicit deepfakes, says Sweet Anita
It’s been a bit over two weeks since a deepfake porn video scandal grasped Twitch. While the public eye has mostly moved on, focusing on Hogwarts Legacy drama, there is “no moving on” for some of the victims, as Sweet Anita stated in a recent interview with ITV News.
It all started when a clip from Twitch streamer Atrioc went viral, showing an opened browser tab of an adult video website. While that alone would not be a huge deal, the opened videos featured deepfake versions of female streamers such as Pokimane, QTCinderella, and Sweet Anita.
Atrioc, who said he got “morbidly curious” and apologized for his actions, has since stepped back from streaming and stated that he wants to focus on helping the victims and taking down similar sites from the internet. One of the affected streamers, QTCinderella, has taken legal action against the site visible on the clip from Atrioc’s stream and vowed to “fucking sue” the person behind it all.
While QTCinderella said that her friendship with Atrioc has been irreparably broken through this incident, Sweet Anita stated that she bears him no ill will: “None of the anger, none of the wanting to do anything about this is directed towards him.”
Instead, she wants everyone consuming such content to understand the impact of what’s happened – and is still happening on a regular basis – on those affected: “It’s literally about wanting people who make this kind of content to A: not profit from it, and B: be genuinely terrified to do it.”
From her perspective, “there isn’t any moving on from it. This is just out there, forever now. This is just an extra aspect that I will have to deal with.” She’s also skeptical about the effect of legal measures, saying: “Frankly, you can change the law, but the law won’t change anything until the culture does. Right now, resoundingly, we’re seeing that a lot of people don’t know what ‘consent’ means. And a lot of people feel entitled to anyone’s body on the internet.”
Significant regulation of deepfake usage is under way in the UK, where the use of one’s image for deepfakes without consent and permission will be punishable by law. The US has no such legal tools available to victims right now, making it very difficult to punish the creators of this sort of content. Porn, alongside political misinformation, is considered one of the most unethical and dangerous areas for which deepfake technology is used today.
