A 25-year-old woman found a video of her teenage self uploaded to Pornhub without consent. Devestated, she is currently in the process of developing an app to prevent more instances of non-consensual pornography.
“The incident happened maybe seven years ago. I was really young, a teenager… I had no idea that monster had secretly filmed me until I saw my video on Pornhub,” the app developer told South China Morning Post. “It was really devastating. I consider myself a very strong person and well-educated, but that was the moment when I literally stopped and thought, ‘I can’t live anymore. I don’t want to live anymore.’”
The 25-year-old who attends a top American university goes by the pseudonym “Tisiphone,” one of the Furies in Greek mythology and the avenger of murder. Alecto AI, her app, takes on the name Alecto, another Fury in Greek mythology who punishes those that commit moral crimes. Alecto AI scans users’ faces and searches for their images online, The Independent reports.
“Damage control is particularly painful [for survivors]. The infringing content is sometimes hosted on various platforms… It is difficult to search for this content scattered all over the internet while being forced to relive our trauma over and over again,” Tisiphone told South China Morning Post. “We can’t defend ourselves unless we have access to technology that can help us do so.”
Tisiphone states that the facial recognition software has a lower accuracy rate when trying to identify people of color. Therefore, she put together a team of five women of color that strive to make the app “powerful, unbiased and compassionate.”
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The Independent reports that in 2020, more than one in three people experienced nude image abuse. This statistic increased from a 2016 study which showcased that about one in five people experienced nude image abuse. Researchers believe that the coronavirus pandemic affected the change in statistics.
Tisiphone states that several security measures ensure that users’ information remains private. She states that no data will be saved on their servers and end-to-end encryption will be implemented.
Alecto AI is planned to launch by the end of this year and its first users are expected to pay a monthly fee. However, Tisiphone hopes to make the app free to use later on through company sponsorships that will pay for the technology.
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