She was careful online, but this Toronto teen was still targeted with deepfake porn [Video]

One of the worst things that can happen to a person, according to Ruby, a 16-year-old from Toronto, is to find a nude picture of yourself on the internet. 

And that’s exactly what happened to her, through no fault of her own. 

“Suddenly I was in that worst-case scenario,” she said.

CBC News is not revealing Ruby’s last name because she was a victim of a worrying new trend — sexually explicit deepfakes of minors.

A deepfake is any image or video that has been altered or created, often using artificial intelligence, that is difficult to distinguish from the real thing. 

Last year, Ruby got a series of messages from someone saying there were images of her online, asking her to click a link to see them. She asked to see them, and was sent a deepfake of herself, topless. The original photo, in which she was fully clothed, had been taken when she was 13.