Twitch star Sweet Anita horrified to learn she's a victim of deepfake porn

Content warning: this article contains details that some readers may find upsetting.

English Twitch streamer Sweet Anita, who has almost two million followers on the Amazon-owned streaming platform at the time of writing, has spoken out against the disturbing deepfake porn of herself that was made without her knowledge or consent.

Earlier this year, it emerged that streamer Atrioc had accessed a deepfake website, which contained explicit deepfake videos and images of a number of popular female streamers. Atrioc apologised for using the website, and stated that “this whole category of stuff is wrong”. However, the scandal made many streamers aware that explicit deepfakes of themselves existed online, including Sweet Anita.

In an interview with The Sun, Sweet Anita spoke up about the effect that the deepfakes have had on her, and how she fears they may continue to impact her life.

“You could deepfake anyone. Anyone from any walk of life could be targeted by this and it feels like people don't give a s***,” she said. “I have never made a single drop of sexual content in my life but now they just assume that I have and I must want this.

“It’s not easy to differentiate this from reality. If people see this video in 10 or 20 years' time, no one will know whether I was a sex worker or this was a deepfake. It could potentially get you fired from jobs in the future if people think you’ve done sex work and it affects your security, how people treat you and you are stigmatised,” she continued. “This will impact my life in a similar way to revenge porn, so I’m just frustrated, tired, and numb. This was nonconsensual and the impacts are permanent.”

According to Sweet Anita, even before the deepfakes were discovered, she was aware that people had been photoshopping pictures of her onto porn, and that some had been roleplaying as her on forums. She said: “There have been whole communities of thousands who get together to sexualise me, I did not consent to any of it. It’s one extra thing in an endless and exhaustive list that female content creators have to take on that are traumatising, take thousands of pounds to address and require therapy to deal with.”

While the website containing the explicit deepfakes of Sweet Anita has now been taken down, and the person who created the porn of the streamer has apologised, Sweet Anita says she doesn’t “really accept the apology because it’s too little too late”. She added: “It looks like damage control from someone facing a pending lawsuit rather than actual remorse.”

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