Scarlett Johansson Has Given Up Trying to Remove Fake Porn Videos: “It’s a Useless Pursuit”

In early 2018, a Reddit user named ‘deepfakes’ superimposed the faces of female celebrities onto porn actresses, creating a wave of fake celebrity porn videos that quickly took over the internet. With the help of AI technology, often referred to as deepfakes in a nod to the original publisher, users can create videos that makes it seem as if Jessica Alba, Gal Gadot, or any celebrity is engaging in NSFW behavior.

One star who has been frequently targeted is Scarlett Johansson, whose face has appeared in dozens of videos, many uploaded onto porn sites, since the technology first emerged. But despite the obvious privacy concerns, Johansson isn’t too optimistic that the fake porn will stop any time soon. In a recent interview with The Washington Post, Johansson said that trying to get the videos taken down is “a useless pursuit,” as “there are basically no rules on the internet,” and there are no global standards for copyrighted images.

When asked about the deepfakes, Johansson was candid about her inability to do anything about the issue. “Clearly this doesn’t affect me as much because people assume it’s not actually me in a porno, however demeaning it is,” she told The Washington Post. “I think it’s a useless pursuit, legally, mostly because the internet is a vast wormhole of darkness that eats itself. There are far more disturbing things on the dark web than this, sadly. I think it’s up to an individual to fight for their own right to their image, claim damages, etc.”

Johansson went on to explain that every country has their own legal policies about “the right to own your image,” so “the same rules might not apply in Germany” that apply in the United States or in other countries. “Even if you copyright pictures with your image that belong to you, the same copyright laws don’t apply overseas. I have sadly been down this road many, many times,” she said. “The fact is that trying to protect yourself from the internet and its depravity is basically a lost cause, for the most part.”

Unfortunately, everyone — celebrity or not — can be a target. “The Internet is just another place where sex sells and vulnerable people are preyed upon,” said a resigned Johansson. “Nothing can stop someone from cutting and pasting my image or anyone else’s onto a different body and making it look as eerily realistic as desired.”

You can read Johansson’s full statement on deepfakes here.