There is deepfake porn of me on the internet...

My reaction to it even surprised me. (No, I didn't start wanking!)

I found out in quite a bizarre way.

A rather innocuous looking forwarded email came through from my agent, with a little note of “Jam, You may want to take a look at this one…” She’s the most nonchalant woman you’ve ever met, and never normally says this unless it’s something quite major.

I am always hoping one of those emails will be “Meryl will not stop calling.”

It’s never that.

Instead, it was a letter from one of the biggest broadcasters on television, informing me that there was a fair amount of deep fake, and A.I. porn of me on the internet, and asking me in the next sentence, if I would like to host a documentary about this use of technology to abuse women?

Before I could even process this, I was stuck on… how they… knew? How did they find out? Did someone there stumble across it accidentally while… jerkin the gherkin? (Sorry.) How did they bring it up in a staff meeting...?

The network made clear what a huge ordeal this must be for me, and expressed such deep sympathy and support. As has everyone I have told… And that’s lovely, and in many ways correct. But something just isn't sitting quite right with me about how this general conversation is being handled…

There is this preconceived certainty that I would feel mortified and violated. Obviously the matter is worth taking seriously, and the women and girls featured in this falsified imagery sometimes experience horrendous bullying, shaming and job insecurity, which is completely unacceptable and frankly, insane. I also know there is a risk of people having their faces imposed on what looks like illegal acts of a sexual nature and so on and so forth. It’s a slippery slope, leading to a quarry of total clusterfuckery. I registered the full implication of this loathsome use of technology.

So I took a deep breath and clicked on the link with my name on it. There I was (but with a much nicer bum.) It took a split second for even my brain to register it wasn’t real, but then “I” started being really good at ‘reverse cow girl’ in the video… which confirmed that it definitely wasn’t me. (A relief, but also… an unexpected humbling.)