Artificial Intelligence, Deepfakes and Digital Violence: Understanding the Impact on Health

Inspiring Minds seeks to broaden awareness and impact of graduate student research, while enhancing transferable skills. Students were challenged to describe their research, scholarship or creative activity in 150 or fewer words to share with our community.

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Artificial Intelligence, Deepfakes and Digital Violence: Understanding the Impact on Health

With the rise of mainstream artificial intelligence (AI) software that can create hyper-realistic images and videos called deepfakes, I was compelled to dive deep into the underbelly of an otherwise helpful technology. The vulnerability I noticed through my literature review was that in some samples, a staggering 99% of AI-generated deepfake images and videos were sexually explicit, and almost all depicted women whose likenesses had been used without consent. What is insidious about this also makes me passionate as a researcher. Through my present and future work, I hope to highlight how digital sexual violence, including the production of explicit deepfakes, can impact both the physical and mental health of women. Ultimately, I want to see my work as part of a growing body of literature that can inform policy and law, forming a harmony between technology, health, and women’s liberation.

Erika Murray
MScN , Nursing
Faculty of Health Sciences - Western University

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Supervisors

Amanda McIntyre (https://www.uwo.ca/fhs/nursing/about/faculty/research_supervisors/mcintyre_a.html)

Kim Jackson (https://www.uwo.ca/fhs/nursing/about/faculty/research_supervisors/jackson_k.html)

Erika is an MScN student at Western University. She is a registered nurse with a clinical background in public health, a career she embarked on after graduating from her undergraduate degree at Western (BScN, 22'). She is very passionate about new technologies, particularly artificial intelligence and machine learning. Her main research interests aim to understand how new technologies impact human health in addition to how they can be used to support human health. Erika is the first in her family to attend university and draws inspiration from her family in Hungary and the Philippines to drive the impact of her work.

You can connect with Erika via emai at ejuhasz@uwo.ca.

View Erika's work as it appears in the Inspiring Minds Digital Collection: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/inspiringminds/677/.