Brandon Ewing, a popular Twitch streamer who goes by the handle “Atrioc” online, took to his livestream on Monday to issue a tearful apology for viewing deepfaked porn of female streaming peers.
“This is so embarrassing,” said an emotional Ewing, “I was on a regular website, and there was an ad on every video… and then I click it, and then I’m in this rabbit hole.”
“I got morbidly curious and I clicked something,” he continued, as his wife looked on in the background. “It’s gross and I’m sorry.”
First of all, Ewing — formerly the global marketing head for gaming hardware giant Nvidia — is right about two things: it is indeed super gross to view deepfaked porn of real people generated without consent, and it’s also embarrassing. Consensual porn is one thing, but deepfaked porn is wholly another, and while the law has been slow to catch up and deepfaked porn isn’t technically illegal in most cases, it’s still wildly invasive and often deeply traumatizing for non-consenting victims.
According to Reddit’s r/LivestreamFail, Ewing was exposed by eagle-eyed followers who caught a deepfaked porn site open in his tabs during a prior livestream. The site he was on apparently contains NSFW deepfakes of his own colleagues and friends, sparking further condemnation.
“It wouldn’t be the end of the world if he happened to have like a Pornhub tab open in the background. Embarrassing, sure, but we all watch porn…” wrote one Redditor. “Deepfaked porn of other streamers you personally kinda know though, god damn.”
Also per Reddit, Ewing’s transgression wasn’t as simple as clicking a link, as the site that he was on is apparently paywalled.
“You can explain it away as having someone send you a fucked up link or you clicked some shit out of the worst kind of morbid curiosity,” reads another comment. “You can’t explain away access to paywalled deepfakes of your friends and colleagues.”
That said, whether you personally know someone or not, deepfaked porn is wrong — although is unfortunately likely to further proliferate as deepfake tech and image-generating AIs get better and more widely used. And shortly after Ewing streamed his own apology, one of the affected women, a streamer who goes by the handle “QTCinderella” (only her first name, Blaire, is publicly known), took to her own livestream to describe what it’s like to be harmed by deepfaked porn.
“I wanted to go live because this is what pain looks like,” she said through tears. “Fuck the fucking internet. Fuck the constant exploitation and objectification of women, it’s exhausting.”
“Fuck Atrioc for showing it to thousands of people,” she continued, vowing to sue the creator of the deepfakes. “Fuck the people DMing me pictures of myself from that website. Fuck you all.”
QTCinderella doubled down later on Twitter, painfully explaining that the “body dysmorphia” that she’s experienced since seeing the deepfaked photos has “ruined” her.
“It’s not as simple as ‘just’ being violated,” she wrote. “It’s so much more than that.”
All in all, it is heartening to see Ewing’s followers call him out for bad behavior, especially in an industry known to have its fair share of it. It’s also positive to see Ewing own up to his mistake.
“There is no excuse for it,” Ewing added in his apology. “I’m not defending it in any way, I think this whole category of stuff is wrong.”
Still, the focus here should be on QTCinderella’s words, and not on Ewing’s. Ewing was embarrassed for doing a bad thing; QTCinderella was violated, a victim of that bad thing.
“If you are able to look at women who are not benefitting off of being seen sexually… [who are] not platforming it themselves,” QTCinderella said in her livestream, “if you are able to look at that, you are the problem.”
More on next-gen nonconsensual porn: There’s a Problem With That AI Portrait App: It Can Undress People Without Their Consent