Forthcoming with Bloomsbury Academic 2025
Deepfake Bodies: The Sexual Politics of AI
Deepfake technology is a form of Artificial Intelligence that creates video and aural content by synthetically merging recorded faces, facial expressions and speech patterns onto other videos. The technology is commonly used to modify the statements and performances of political leaders and celebrities as political satire and/or artistic experimentation, but has also become a widely used tool of fake news and disinformation. The commodification of deepfake technology has led to large quantities of nude and sexualized deepfakes featuring synthesized bodies, facial expressions and speeches. These can project light-hearted fantasies, but have also enabled rampant practices of online misogyny and sextortion—the act of harming people’s private lives or public careers by threatening to share nude or explicit images. Deepfake Bodies shows that global technologies are being adopted as a cultural politics of sexual degradation with impact on women, feminism, sexual and ethnic minorities. The study commits to a nuanced analysis of massive data and online ethnography within Chinese and European (online) cultures to reveal how AI creativity is being coopted by supremacist political ideologies as gendered and immoral-hate media. As a strictly monitored yet resilient media trend, how are deepfakes impacting democracy and the livelihood sex and gender cultures?