Pakistani actresses urge authorities to respond to violent deepfakes
Pakistani actresses and other public figures have called on the authorities to respond to the spread on Instagram of videos created using artificial intelligence that depict violence against and humiliation of female celebrities. This was reported by Dawn.
Deepfake videos
Digital creator Muhammad Ahsan drew attention to the issue, criticizing an Instagram account labeled M. According to the publication, the page contained AI-generated videos: in some, a deepfake of M allegedly beat or pushed deepfakes of male and female celebrities, while in others, he danced with and hugged them.
Among those whose likenesses were used in the videos was actress Hania Aamir, as well as other Pakistani and international celebrities. In his video, Ahsan showed a blurred fragment in which a deepfake of M hits a deepfake of Aamir. According to him, this was not the only such recording: the page also contained videos featuring inappropriate behavior, beatings and humiliation of actors, influencers and content creators.
Ahsan also showed comments under the posts whose authors approved of these videos. At the same time, according to Dawn, numerous critical responses and calls for action appeared under the videos over the past day. Ahsan asked users to report similar content. The publication contacted M for comment but had not received a response at the time of publication.
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Actresses' reaction and legislation
Actress Mahira Khan said that the prevalence of violence against women in Pakistan should not be surprising if such treatment of famous women is acceptable to some people. Kinza Hashmi tagged representatives of the authorities in Punjab, Sindh and Islamabad, urging them to pay attention to the situation.
Actress Tamkenat Mansur stressed that creating such content should be illegal, if it is not already. Zara Tareen urged those who had seen the videos to help identify the creator, report them to the authorities and file a police complaint.
Pakistan's Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act does not contain specific provisions on AI-generated content. At the same time, police and courts have applied existing provisions to deepfake cases, including Article 20 on online defamation and Article 21 concerning modesty and images without consent. Last year, Punjab police registered charges under this law and provisions of the Pakistan Penal Code on defamation over AI deepfake videos of Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz.
According to UN Women estimates, between 16% and 58% of women worldwide have experienced some form of digital violence, while 90–95% of deepfakes circulated online contain sexualized images of women.
