As a long time kaiako (teacher) with Kia Haumaru, a Personal Safety Organisation, as well as a tech enthusiast… this session was born out of a new need to inform ourselves how to keep our kids safe.
It felt like just a few years ago when we were dealing with the new idea of sending nudes to boyfriends, girlfriends and other intimate partners online, and warning our young people of the dangers of that. I’m not sure that message has fully sunk in yet, and now we are facing a whole new threat, and this time, through no fault at all of the young person at all.
Deep fake technology is easily accessible and in a lot of cases, completely free. Taking any image or video that exists, you can create video, imagery or audio of what sounds like a real version of the original material.
This can be used to amuse – imagine making a funny video of someone you don’t like falling over, but you can see how quickly that can descend into bullying.
The examples I used in the presentation are a bit more nefarious than that:
- Taylor Swift, world renowned pop superstar had compromising videos of her posted online. One viewed over 47 million times, before even her giant army of publicists could take it down. Unlike previous “leaks” of explicit material, she didn’t film these, they were faked from her likeness (which is easily accessible globally)
- Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky was filmed calling on his soldiers to lay down their weapons… he didn’t do that, and now we’re meddling in global conflicts and politics.
- A local Australian teacher found a ‘close’ friend creating pornographic images of her and sharing it widely on the internet.
- The Chief Operating Officer of Aotearoa’s own Netsafe, found how scary and real it is, when a reporter showed up at her office.
You can see that these range from something that can make someone a lot of money to things that can have devastating consequences for reputations, privacy and we’re not even starting to talk about the different cultural attitudes that exist here in Aotearoa for nudity and sexual content.
I’ve included the slide deck (in PDF format with notes), as well as a resource document I created, and a link to the recording we did (THANKS to TUANZ)
Please note: Thank you to TUANZ, InternetNZ and Kia Haumaru for giving me the funding and impetus for doing this presentation. HUGE thanks especially to Craig Young, CEO of TUANZ who spent time supporting me in presenting these!
I’ve run this presentation multiple times, each time customising it to the audience and specifically to how they are connected to young people. If you’d like me to do this for your school, kura or organisation that supports young people, hit me up!
Vivian Chandra 