Searching for Mr. Deepfakes: Seeds of Change [Part 4]

Summary

Mostly Human with Laurie Segall

Episode: Searching for Mr. Deepfakes: Seeds of Change [Part 4]
Date: July 9, 2026
Host: Laurie Segall
Notable Guests: Paris Hilton, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Senator Angelique Ashby, Carrie Goldberg (lawyer), Yvonne Meer (Chief Deputy City Attorney, SF), victims and families impacted by deepfake abuse

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Episode Overview

This powerful episode of Mostly Human centers on the human costs, evolving legal battles, and grassroots activism surrounding deepfake abuse—particularly non-consensual, AI-generated sexual images. Laurie Segall traces the story from personal trauma to legislative victories, placing special focus on the turning point of taking down one of the internet’s largest deepfake porn sites, Mr. Deepfakes. The episode interweaves victims’ stories, expert analysis, and policy conversations, demonstrating both the devastation and burgeoning hope in this critical fight for digital justice.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Deep Cost of Deepfake Abuse

• Paris Hilton’s Experience (02:13–05:21):
  • Paris Hilton recounts being digitally violated through the infamous non-consensual release of her private video, drawing chilling parallels to today’s AI-driven abuse.
  • Quote: “It was like being digitally raped and having the whole world watching it and laughing. And I just felt just so ashamed when that shame should never have been on me.” – Paris Hilton (02:38)
  • Paris now faces a fresh wave of abuse, as AI-generated explicit images of her proliferate online.
  • Quote: “Now that it's happening today and you don't even have to know the person. They can literally just take your photo… it’s just terrifying.” – Paris Hilton (03:28)
  • She underscores the confusion and harm when the public cannot distinguish deepfakes from reality.

2. Turning Personal Pain into Urgent Action (05:50–07:22)

• Laurie shares a major life moment—discovering her pregnancy—which fuels her determination to fight AI sexual abuse more urgently for the next generation.
• Her husband, John, echoes the need for structural, not just individual, change.
  • Quote: “A win is…not just take down Mr. Deepfakes, but, like, fundamentally change…the process that enables these types of things to exist.” – John (06:28)
• Coalitions are built, blending “good-guy hackers,” policy experts, survivors, and celebrities.

3. Legislative and Legal Battles (09:29–12:12)

• Introduction of federal bills—the Take it Down Act and the Defiance Act—marks a shift, criminalizing AI sexual imagery and supporting victims’ legal recourses (09:29).
• City Attorney David Chu leads a major lawsuit in San Francisco against 16 notification (deepfake) websites, stressing the gap between passing laws versus enforcing them (09:54).
  • Quote: “It’s not enough to pass a law. You need to have the ability to enforce that law.” – David Chu (10:24)
• Attorney Carrie Goldberg emphasizes platform accountability:
  • Quote: “We have to be holding the platforms responsible… I want victims to be able to go after the platforms that are accommodating these kinds of bad actors and are…minting money off of it.” – Carrie Goldberg (11:32)
• The UK takes the lead in criminalizing both the creation and dissemination of explicit deepfakes, blocking Mr. Deepfakes entirely (12:12).

4. Deepfakes Reach Children and Schools: Real World Harm (16:52–24:40)

• Nadia Khan Roberts’ Story (16:52–20:57):

  • Her 13-year-old daughter and classmates were targeted by AI nude deepfakes made by other teens.
  • The trauma is palpable: “The skin color and the skin tone matched her face like 99.9%.…my daughter's face on this body…” – Nadia Khan Roberts (19:58)
  • School and police are initially unprepared, but after pressure from parents, the boys responsible are arrested for sex crimes (20:38).
  • Quote: “Our children are on the front lines of a war that we, we didn't even know anything about, and we have to get in the fight.” – Shannon, mother of a victim (21:50)

• Sextortion and Suicide: Eli’s Story (22:05–24:40):

  • In Kentucky, a well-liked 16-year-old, Eli, dies by suicide after being targeted with AI-generated images and blackmailed for money.
  • Quote: “Imagine being a 16-year-old child and…getting harassed by multiple people. Text after text after message after message of that's not enough money…” – Shannon (24:05)
  • The case highlights how AI abuse amplifies traditional extortion, requiring no actual compromising photos.

5. The Takedown of Mr. Deepfakes (29:37–32:19)

• Laurie and her team recount the moment Mr. Deepfakes—once hosting over 1.5 billion videos—was finally taken offline after seven years (29:37–30:29).
  • Critical actions included: on-the-ground confrontation, legal pressure (UK blocking, payment providers pulling support), tech changes (Google deranks site), and passage of the Take It Down Act.
  • Quote: “There was friction that was created that made a site like this…no longer inevitable. All these little things…together created this wave of change…” – Laurie Segall (31:32)
• The site’s suspected operator, David Doe, faces professional misconduct hearings, with extradition complexities hindering criminal charges.

6. Paris Hilton’s Advocacy and Mainstream Momentum (34:19–39:14)

• Paris Hilton joins Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to support the Defiance Act, speaking out publicly for victims and for legal change.
  • Quote: “Too many women are afraid to exist online or sometimes to exist at all. And I know how that feels because I've lived it.” – Paris Hilton (34:27)
• Paris partners with Laurie to launch an impactful TikTok documentary series, reaching 32 million viewers and drawing grassroots support from survivors and advocates (39:14).

7. Real Change at the Policy Level (39:53–43:04)

• Laurie testifies alongside Paris Hilton in support of SB 1111 in California, which provides clear legal standing for deepfake victims (40:00–41:52).
  • Quote: “The images may be fake…The impact is real.” – Laurie Segall (40:52)
  • Rep. Ocasio-Cortez champions the bill: “It is utterly terrifying to just see what's been happening with AI and the way that it's been weaponized against women, against children.” (41:13)
• The bill passes through committee, signaling legislative progress and hope.

8. Survivors Transform Trauma Into Advocacy (43:04–45:12)

• Many guests and families who shared their stories in the series are now activists—changing laws, launching nonprofits, and training youth in AI ethics.
  • Quote: “It can be scary and nerve wracking to speak up… but at the same time, it's important to take back our image.” – John, victim’s husband (43:42)
  • Quote: “How far do you want to take this? … To the very fucking edge.” – Nadia Khan Roberts (44:02)
  • Quote: “We’re doing everything we can to make sure this doesn’t happen to somebody else’s kid.” – Shannon, mother of Eli (44:27)
  • Quote: “…it's not reactive, it's proactive, that we become sort of an entity of hope.” – Luke, father of a victim (44:47)

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Memorable Moments & Notable Quotes

• “Talking about it is a way to make people understand… When this happened, I was just taught to stay silent… But now… I just can’t stay silent.” – Paris Hilton (38:15)
• “Change doesn't happen in a vacuum…it's through community and coalition building, but also through the bravery of the survivors who speak out and speak up.” – Laurie Segall (43:04)
• “If you've been a victim of Deepfake abuse… We want to hear from you.” – Laurie Segall (45:12)

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Important Timestamps

| Time | Segment/Topic | |-----------|--------------| | 02:13–04:24 | Paris Hilton on original and new AI-based abuse | | 05:50–07:22 | Laurie’s pregnancy, deepening personal mission | | 09:29–12:12 | Legal battle: SF lawsuit, UK leadership, platform accountability | | 16:52–21:23 | First US school-based deepfake arrests (Nadia’s case) | | 22:05–24:40 | Eli’s suicide and sextortion amplified by AI | | 29:37–32:19 | Mr. Deepfakes taken down—how pressure closed the site | | 34:19–39:14 | Paris Hilton, AOC advocate for the Defiance Act and TikTok doc impact | | 39:53–43:04 | Laurie, Paris, and team succeed in helping pass SB 1111 in California | | 43:04–45:12 | Survivors become activists, launch nonprofits, train youth |

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Conclusion: The Seeds of Change

The episode demonstrates how a movement—powered by survivors, legal advocates, journalists, and unlikely allies like Paris Hilton—grew from individual trauma and loss into a force for real-world change. Laws were passed. Sites taken down. New leaders emerged. But the work continues, expanding through coalition-building, education, public storytelling, and policy reform. The final message is one of courage and hope: real change is possible when those hurt by technology reclaim their voices and society listens.

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For resources or to share your story, visit: BeyondMrDeepFakes.com
Follow: @MostlyHumanMedia on social, or email [e-mail]

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Summary by Podcast AI Summarizer – preserving the spirit, urgency, and human stories from “Searching for Mr. Deepfakes: Seeds of Change.”

Transcript

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[Narrator/Reporter Commentary]

Variable supplies last not available on third

[Lori Siegel]

Party before we get started, this episode discusses sexual abuse and suicide. Please take care while listening.

[Paris Hilton]

It was just one of the most painful and traumatizing, humiliating, degrading experiences of my life.

[Lori Siegel]

Paris Hilton was 19 when an intimate, private video of herself was released to the world without her consent in the gossip magazines. It was a scandal, but in reality it was abuse.

[Paris Hilton]

It was like being digitally raped and having the whole world watching it and laughing. And I Just felt just so ashamed when that shame should never have been on me. And yeah, it's something that I'll have to live with for the rest of my life.

[Lori Siegel]

In 2004, in the early days of the Internet, Paris's one video was viewed millions of times. The widespread distribution of that sexually explicit video was non consensual. And today we're experiencing a new version of this reality. Except this time you don't even have to take a real photo or a video with AI. All you have to do is exist.

[Paris Hilton]

Now that it's happening today and you don't even have to know the person. They can literally just take your photo and just make it is just terrifying.

[Lori Siegel]

Once again, Paris likeness is being used without her consent. But this time it's AI generated and it's appearing on sites like Mr. Deepfakes and beyond.

[Paris Hilton]

It's very triggering now to see it happening even at a larger scale with strangers all around the world who I've never even met. And there's 100 something thousand deepfake images of me. It's just disgusting. And what also hurts me so much is that these are not real images. But people don't know that. People, if they don't understand AI, they would just assume it's real. And I've worked so hard just to

[Nicole Boucher]

really

[Paris Hilton]

change that image of me because it never should have been that, you know, what happened with me with someone. I was 19, I was in a serious relationship. I trusted him. And that was so long ago. And it's. I feel like it's something that's haunted me my whole life. So now for it to be happening again, but on such a larger scale, it's just, it's so humiliating. That's why it's, you know, even though it's uncomfortable to talk about, you know, I'm speaking out for all these other women and children who are having to deal with this right now so that they can have some justice.

[Lori Siegel]

Unfortunately, I'd seen this story before, the one where tech moves fast, the laws haven't caught up, and women are the first victims. What happened to Paris in the early 2000s was a predictor of what would come. And now her deepfake abuse is symbolic of the reality we live in today. And that's what brought us together.

[Paris Hilton]

I don't understand how it's legal for there just to be all these apps that are coming up now and websites where people can do this to others because it could really ruin someone's life and destroy their confidence, destroy their future.

[Lori Siegel]

I'M Lori Siegel, and you're listening to Mostly Human, a tech podcast through a human lens. This is searching for Mr. Deepfakes part four. This one was okay. This is when we heard the heartbeat,

[John (Lori's husband)]

which, like, that is so wild.

[Lori Siegel]

That's a moment that's really cool. Yeah, that's my husband, John. As you can tell, something pretty big happened. A month after we got back from finding the operator behind Mr. Deepfakes in Canada, John and I found out we were going to have a baby. The journey to stop deepfake abuse felt even more urgent now. It was personal.

[John (Lori's husband)]

I realized, like, it's not enough to go find the guy. We have to help people see the thing they're not seeing yet. Politicians, folks who can move the needle. And I think as a mom, it just makes it, like all of it just feels urgent.

[Narrator/Reporter Commentary]

Yeah.

[John (Lori's husband)]

A win is like being able to not just take down Mr. Deepfakes, but, like, fundamentally change, like, the. Like the process that enables these types of things to exist. You know, something that really makes it so other people have recourse if this happens to them.

[Unknown Speaker (Metaphor about change)]

You gotta remember you are putting blocks on the foundation. I think it's really important to keep that perspective of change because there's a lot of different ingredients in change. There are seeds, there's the dirt, there's the water, there's the sunshine. And I think what you're creating now is a seed.

[Lori Siegel]

After talking to David do back in Canada, we had a new resolve for this investigation. We came back with this thought to create actual change. We had to cast a wide net and talk to as many people as possible about this. This is round two of our investigation.

[John (Lori's husband)]

Round one was finding Mr. Deepakes. Round two is like, how do we actually create changes? We have, like, a whole little war room set up. So we put together our good guy hackers who helped us track Mr. Deepfakes. Now we're putting together essentially, like, a team of policy folks, celebrities, you name it, folks who can help us, like, we think, move the needle forward.

[Narrator/Reporter Commentary]

So it's legal action, legislative change and cultural change, like, all working in concert. Not just one, but it's a big task.

[Lori Siegel]

My first step was Casey Mock, who at the time was the senior policy director at the center for Humane Technology.

[Narrator/Reporter Commentary]

This is set up to have that army of Mr. Deepfakes, like, grow kind of automatically by default. There's a pipeline here where now young men largely will be given access to these notification apps. They'll be playing with it, and they make one deepfake of someone that they Know, someone with a classmate, and they're in it and they may try to figure out ways that they can either do it themselves or monetize it or whatever. And then they're like, in the system, they're a member of that army. And it seems like the hosts of the website and the people behind it are more than willing to train people up to be able to do this themselves, to generate their own content. And so it has this flywheel effect where it's, if we do nothing right, that army is just gonna grow.

[Lori Siegel]

Right.

[John (Lori's husband)]

I think that's the fear. Right? So it's like, how do we take all of the stuff that we learn and actually create change? And I think this is like what you've done your whole career, right? Which is like, take some of these, like, heartbreaking things, but also help push forward, go behind closed doors in D.C. talk to the right people to try

[Lori Siegel]

to push forward policies.

[Narrator/Reporter Commentary]

You've been covering tech for more than a decade, and like, you've seen stuff that policy advocates have never seen. Like, you've had conversations that they haven't had access to. So you have information that's very valuable to policymakers.

[Lori Siegel]

On the legislative side, there'd been some movement. In the summer of 2024, two federal bills, the Take it Down act and the Defiance act, were introduced. They work toward different things, criminalizing the creation of AI generated images on the one hand, and providing civil recourse for victims on the other.

[David Chu (San Francisco City Attorney)]

This is not innovation. This is a 21st century version of sexual abuse and child sexual abuse.

[Lori Siegel]

But some weren't waiting for federal progress. The San Francisco Attorney's office filed an unprecedented case against 16 notification websites that were targeting everyday people. That case was led by San Francisco City Attorney David Chu and Chief Deputy City Attorney Yvonne Meer.

[Yvonne Meer (Chief Deputy City Attorney)]

We are trained as lawyers that there is a system of justice and when something unlawful happens or something unfair happens, there's a remedy that can be sought in our courts.

[David Chu (San Francisco City Attorney)]

As soon as we filed this lawsuit, I was contacted by colleagues of mine from the California state legislature as well as from other places around the country who are interested in this space. It's not enough to pass a law. You need to have the ability to enforce that law. And I think one thing that's clear is a lot of these laws were passed with the intent of trying to assist victims in vindicating their rights. But the victims have found it to be incredibly difficult to get justice for themselves and their situations, which is why we felt so compelled to step in.

[Yvonne Meer (Chief Deputy City Attorney)]

We are never going to be able in these kinds of cases to sue everyone. It is a powerful tool. But we need partners and we need to raise awareness.

[Lori Siegel]

What do you think needs to happen from a legal standpoint to actually make it so we are safer online in this kind of deepfake era?

[Carrie Goldberg (Lawyer)]

Well, my position has always been that we have to be holding the platforms responsible.

[Lori Siegel]

Carrie Goldberg is a lawyer who's been helping victims of digital abuse for decades.

[Carrie Goldberg (Lawyer)]

There are always going to be bad actors that pedal in other people's nudity, whether that's deepfakes or revenge porn or sextortion. And so yes, I want criminal laws to punish the individual actors, but I also want, I want victims to be able to, to go after the platforms that are accommodating these kinds of bad actors and are like minting money off of it.

[Lori Siegel]

Our coalition was growing at home and abroad. In the winter of 2025, we connected with partners at the home office in the uk.

[UK Home Office Representative]

Thank you so much all for joining. It truly is a really special group of expertise that we have today.

[Lori Siegel]

British policymakers had taken a strong lead on the issue, announcing plans to criminalize sexually explicit deepfakes to the point where Mr. Deepfakes was now blocked in the country. They fought to criminalize not just the dissemination of this type of material, but also the creation of it.

[UK Home Office Representative]

Very illuminating information that Laurie and Nicole have been uncovering through a multi year investigation at this point into the Mr. Deepfakes website, which as we all know, is a very, very pivotal force in the deepfake NCIA harm landscape.

[Lori Siegel]

It felt like we had momentum, but we also felt the urgency for legal, societal and for cultural change to move even faster. Because just as we had feared, deepfake abuse was spreading into more vulnerable places. Our schools now it was affecting the youngest generation coming of age. With AI

[UK Home Office Representative]

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he's like,

[Nadia Khan Roberts]

do you want to see the image? Like very cautiously, the way he spoke, like, do you want to see the image of your daughter?

[Lori Siegel]

Nadia Khan Roberts is in a small room in the police station near her home in Miami, Florida, and a detective is handing her a thick binder of images.

[Nadia Khan Roberts]

And I said, yes, I want to see it.

[Lori Siegel]

The detective opens the binder and Nadia feels an immediate wave of nausea.

[Nadia Khan Roberts]

Like, oh my God, I started crying.

[Lori Siegel]

As Nadia's body is flooded with shock, the detective asks her something nobody else had.

[Nadia Khan Roberts]

He looks at me in the eyes and he goes, do you want to press charges? And I said, yes, absolutely, I want to press charges.

[Lori Siegel]

The nightmare for Nadia begins right before Christmas break 2023. Nadia, a Spanish teacher at a local high school, gets a panicked call from her 13 year old daughter in the middle of the day.

[Nadia Khan Roberts]

She called me first. When she was called down to the office, she was crying and she says, I need you to come pick me up right now. I need to leave. And I was like, okay, well I'm at work. She's like, you don't understand, I need to leave. I saw a picture. I saw a picture and then I'm very freaking out. I'm like, what picture? What are you talking about? A picture of me naked. And I'm like, what? No, but it's not really me, mom. And she couldn't even really piece the words together because she was having an anxiety attack.

[Lori Siegel]

Nadia drove down to the school and the story quickly unfolded. Two boys at her daughter's middle school had been caught exchanging AI generated nude photos of their female classmates.

[Nadia Khan Roberts]

I'm finding out that there's 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, up to 15 girls they did this to. Then wait, no, there was a teacher they did it to as well. Wait, no, there's another. And I'm like, whoa.

[Lori Siegel]

More than a dozen girls, at least two teachers, their images were run through an AI notification app by two boys from well respected, hard working families in the community. The school called the police and suspended the boys, unsure of how to deal with something so new that many of them had never even heard of before. After the Christmas break, the boys would return to the classes with the girls they deep faked. Nadia's daughter was panicked at the thought.

[Nadia Khan Roberts]

She's freaking out, like, nobody wants to be in a room with essentially this an abuser, be it, albeit not physical, right? But the psychological abuse, I mean, I think it is. And I'm imagining myself, right, like having to face these kids in the hallway. A lot of these girls have classes with these kids. And that's when I really just stop. I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no.

[Lori Siegel]

Nadia eventually went to the police station to see the images, the big binder of images the boys had created of their classmates and teachers. And she was shocked by how accurate this fake image of her daughter looked.

[Nadia Khan Roberts]

The skin color and the skin tone matched her face like 99.9%. And her private parts were accentuated, like exaggerated, unrealistic. But it still, it was my daughter's face on this body with the same skin color tone that I got nauseous and wanted to vomit. And I started crying because my kid had to see it first, alone, without the presence of her parent or guardian with her.

[Lori Siegel]

The police told her this could be treated as a sex crime, child pornography. If they got enough of the parents to press charges, they would arrest the boys. Nadia spoke to other parents and one of the teachers who had been deep faked. It wasn't an easy choice, but eventually enough people were on board and the boys were arrested.

[Luke (Father of victim)]

I remember when we were facing that decision, I felt the gravity of it.

[Lori Siegel]

Luke is the 13 year old girl's father.

[Luke (Father of victim)]

It was a really big deal for us. You know, these are 13 year old boys. And I couldn't help but think about the other side. They're getting, you know, charged with a sex crime that could follow them the rest of their life. So it was, it was heavy, but we didn't hesitate. We knew it was the right thing to do.

[Lori Siegel]

This was the first case of its kind in the United States where charges were actually filed. But what was painfully clear about this nightmare to Nadia, Luke and others was something else had to change. The cultural mindset around creating sexually explicit deepfakes in the first place. Kids, teens, they needed to understand that this was wrong, that this type of abuse hurt and it caused real world harm.

[Shannon (Mother of victim)]

Our children are on the front lines of a war that we, we didn't even know anything about, and we have to get in the fight.

[Lori Siegel]

John and his wife Shannon understand the stakes now too. They also have teenagers, twin 16 year olds, Palin and Elijah or Eli.

[Yvonne Meer (Chief Deputy City Attorney)]

She's straight, a student, wants to go to medical school. Eli was our tornado.

[Shannon (Mother of victim)]

There's nothing calm about the boy.

[Yvonne Meer (Chief Deputy City Attorney)]

No.

[Lori Siegel]

The family lives in a small country town in Kentucky. In February 2025, Palin and Eli were looking forward to prom. Eli was about to start the spring tennis season. He wanted to help the team go to state this year, everything seemed normal when Shannon and John went to bed on February 27,

[Yvonne Meer (Chief Deputy City Attorney)]

and within an hour and a half, his sister, his twin, woke us up and told us Eli was hurt.

[Lori Siegel]

Eli had died by suicide and they had no clue why. How did a well adjusted teenager go from prepping for tennis and prom to ending his own life? As paramedics took Eli from his home, Shannon's eyes were drawn to his phone. She went into his messages and found a picture that looked like Eli's face. It was on a naked body, but something looked a little bit off.

[Yvonne Meer (Chief Deputy City Attorney)]

I guess it was supposed to be Eli. It was Eli's face features, but it was like

[Nadia Khan Roberts]

so white.

[Yvonne Meer (Chief Deputy City Attorney)]

I'm talking like a piece of paper.

[Lori Siegel]

White cops. And soon the FBI went through the phone and told the parents they believed it to be a case of sextortion. In the rising tide of cybercrime, boys in Eli's age range were being targeted by scammers who traditionally posed as females. They'd get boys to send nude photos of themselves and then they'd blackmail them with those photos. But AI turbocharges that abuse, the victim no longer needs to be tricked into sending any intimate photo of themselves. Scammers can now send an AI generated picture to a victim and threaten to ruin their lives if they don't pay up. And this is what Eli's parents believe happened. The scammers wanted $3,000. Eli could only send 50.

[Shannon (Mother of victim)]

I know him from top to bottom. There's nothing about that picture that matched. But you can't tell that to his friends at school. You can't tell that to his principal. They don't know. Imagine being a 16 year old child and they're getting harassed by multiple people. Text after text after message after message of that's not enough money. You better give us our money. If you don't give us our money, your parents are going to see this, your grandparents are going to see it, your friends at school, your principal. Everybody's going to see this. And that's the pressure that eli was under.

[Yvonne Meer (Chief Deputy City Attorney)]

$50 for my son's life. $50 was all he was worth to these people.

[Kal Penn]

Hey everyone, it's Cal Penn. I'm the host of Irsay, the Audible and Iheart Audiobook Club. This week on the podcast, I am sitting down with Ray Porter, the narrator of Andy Weir's audiobook project Hail Mary, Massive sci fi adventure about survival and science and what happens when you wake up alone, very far, far from earth.

[Ray Porter]

I really had to make a decision because I caught myself getting that frog in my throat and starting to get teary as I'm narrating some of these sections and it's like, okay, yo yo yo, is this indulgent? And I really thought about it. I was like, no. At this point it would kind of be betraying the trust the author and the listener have in telling this story if I don't go through it. But there's places in this book that that deeply, emotionally affected me and I left it on the mic. That's great because it served the story. People will say like, oh my God, I cried at the end. It's like, yeah dude, me too.

[Kal Penn]

Listen to Hearsay, the Audible and iHeart audiobook club on the iHeartradio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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[Nicole Boucher]

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[Lori Siegel]

In early 2025, it felt like we actually had momentum. Pressure was mounting. We just kept pushing out our story and talking to the media, to politicians and to leaders in the space. And then in February 2025, I had my son Charlie. I talked about this period with my producers, Roxy and Nicole. And I remember I was like, all right away, message is going up. Like, matt leave. Yay, you can breathe.

[John (Lori's husband)]

And then something happened in May of 2025 and that something was kind of the thing that we'd been waiting on

[Lori Siegel]

for a long time. Do y' all remember that day?

[Roxy (Producer)]

I do. I think you called like a group FaceTime situation and I was like, probably walking Leo in like a baby carrier on me. And it was raining and I was holding the umbrella and trying to like hold the phone. But you said that it was really important, so we had to get on.

[Lori Siegel]

It was a zoom call with Roxy, me, Roxy's husband, Toni and Nicole just wanted to give like a teeny bit of breaking news. Mr. Deepfakes is officially shut down. The whole website, the whole website, whole website is gone. As of when?

[Nicole (Producer)]

I think it was late last night.

[Lori Siegel]

I think this is. It's gone for good. I like generally like gone for good.

[John (Lori's husband)]

I don't think it's coming back.

[Shannon (Mother of victim)]

Wow.

[Lori Siegel]

Seven years, thousands of victims, over 1.5 billion videos. But finally the largest deep fake porn site on the Internet was gone. Do you remember the message on the site? It said, like, it was like a

[Nicole (Producer)]

critical service provider has been lost. All the data's been lost. This is permanent. And like, anyone who creates another site, they're copycats.

[John (Lori's husband)]

And so a couple things had happened

[Lori Siegel]

ahead of that, right? Beginning with like, let's go back a year when we literally, I believe we were the first people to show up at his, at his door, at his workplace to show that he could no longer do this anonymously.

[Vital Proteins Disclaimer]

Right.

[Lori Siegel]

I think that was an important data point. Law started getting passed. They basically cut off access to the UK because it would be breaking the law. Now all of a sudden, like that puts pressure on payment providers who are no longer available on Mr. Deepfakes. All of a sudden it puts pressure on advertisers it puts pressure on tech platforms. Google deranked the site, so the first

[John (Lori's husband)]

thing you saw wasn't a sexually explicit

[Lori Siegel]

deepfake of yourself when you Googled your name. And then the week that it went down, the Take It down act passed, which was the first federal law targeting deepfakes. And then the cbc, another news organization, had done an investigation into David Doe and the man behind Mr. Deepfakes. So if I could look at this and say, well, what, like, what actually

[John (Lori's husband)]

caused the site to go down?

[Lori Siegel]

It always comes down to the word friction. There was friction that was created that made a site site like this, a

[John (Lori's husband)]

site that people told us was an

[Lori Siegel]

inevitability that, okay, welcome to this new AI era. This is just an inevitability. It doesn't have to be. All of these little things that might seem, on their own, inconsequential together created this wave of change that I believe is a playbook for the future. As for its suspected operator, David Doe was placed on leave at the hospital, and there's a pending hearing for professional misconduct. The Netherlands and Denmark weighed extradition, and we contacted multiple law enforcement agencies in Canada, but none reported active investigations. When I asked Casey Mock what could come of David Doe, he said it was a complicated case.

[Narrator/Reporter Commentary]

It depends on where certain things are hosted or living or incorporated. Right. Like you found him in Canada. That complexifies the issue a lot. It would take a creative prosecutor, I think, to put the operator of this website in prison right now.

[Lori Siegel]

We spoke to Canadian legal experts who agreed. They said there could always be pathways to accountability, but it was by no means straightforward. Kerry Goldberg, our law expert in digital abuse, said that one avenue for victim recourse could come from the fact that we had evidence. Mr. Deepfakes was both the platform operator and a creator himself.

[Carrie Goldberg (Lawyer)]

So the trick in holding an individual liable is showing that he actually was the one creating the content. If Mr. Deepfake was himself actually creating the Deepfakes and posting Those, then absolutely 100% people could be holding David liable for that.

[Lori Siegel]

As of the release of this story, David Doe has not been convicted or charged with any crime. We've reached out to him repeatedly over the last two years, but he has yet to respond to any of our requests for comment. We had worried that Mr. Deepfakes was the canary in the coal mine. Unfortunately, deepfake abuse was now mainstream. It doesn't end with David Doe, and it doesn't end with Mr. Deepfakes going down. The work continues. We wanted to push the story of Mr. Deepfakes out to as big of an audience as possible, which meant going to the big streamers. But we heard the same thing. Executive after executive after had every excuse for why this issue wasn't exactly made for TV audiences. But we pressed on. And in January 2026, a new advocate came onto the scene.

[Nicole Boucher]

It's the newest form of victimization happening at scale to your daughters, your sisters, your friends and neighbors. A staggering one in eight girls today are experiencing the harms of AI generated deepfake porn.

[Lori Siegel]

Paris Hilton joined Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez in support of the Defiance act, which was still, since July 2024, stalled in the house.

[Nicole Boucher]

I hear from teenage girls who are terrified to go to school because they know a deep fake of them is circulating. I hear from women who are scared to run for office, to apply for jobs, to speak publicly because they know how easily their image can be weaponized against them. Too many women are afraid to exist online or sometimes to exist at all. And I know how that feels because I've lived it.

[Lori Siegel]

I remember, like, seeing this clip of Paris Hilton, like, dressed to the nines, like very Paris Hilton esque, like on Capitol Hill and talking about this and advocating for this. And I remember, cause we'd been sitting out there for so long trying to tell people knock on doors and say, help us get the story out, like it's important. And I remember turning to my husband, we were in the elevator and saying to John, like, I think we should just partner with Paris Hilton and get it out through Paris. Like, she has an incredible platform. And he was like, do you know Paris? And I was like, no, those are details. But like, we can track down Mr.

[John (Lori's husband)]

Defects.

[Lori Siegel]

We can track down Paris Hilton.

[Nicole (Producer)]

And we always, like, for the entire time, we were like, how do we maximize impact of this story? We're like, would there be somebody or some buddies who could. We could team up with and kind of grow this movement together. And so I think that moment at the beginning of this year where we saw Paris was like a light bulb that went off of, wow, this could be the way to take this beyond Mr.

[UK Home Office Representative]

Deep.

[Lori Siegel]

And so we ended up connecting with her team and showed them the materials. And I have to say, like, they moved and they moved quickly and Paris got involved in a big way. And we ended up speaking to Paris and like that. Do y' all remember, like, we were at the New York Stock Exchange on International Women's Day with Paris Hilton and Gloria Steinem?

[Nicole (Producer)]

I mean, there was just so much around it that was kind of like, reclaiming the story. Everyone who was, like, a victim in this, like, really came out as, like, a strong advocate for change, and that's what it felt like when we connected

[Lori Siegel]

with, like, with Paris.

[Narrator/Reporter Commentary]

Yeah.

[Lori Siegel]

It's not like you're speaking another language to someone. So I just have to say, the

[Unknown Advocate/Coalition Member]

idea that we could have Paris Hilton as part of the army is, I would just say, like, to borrow a phrase from you, iconic. So thank you for doing this and thank you for helping us with this mission. I'm curious why it's personal to you.

[Paris Hilton]

This work is definitely personal to me, just from what I experienced at 19, when there were no laws to protect me. So if I can really turn my pain into a purpose once again and make it so that other girls don't have to go through what I went through, that's so meaningful to me. So I'll do whatever in my power I can to help.

[Unknown Advocate/Coalition Member]

People always say to me, oh, you know, if you take down Mr. Deepfakes, it's just, okay, we'll whack them all. And I. And I just think, like, that's such a boring argument.

[Lori Siegel]

Like, if we take down a site

[Unknown Advocate/Coalition Member]

where 18 million people are going, and it's teaching young men how to do this, and in the process, we help change laws, and we can tell people that this is.

[Yvonne Meer (Chief Deputy City Attorney)]

Actually.

[Paris Hilton]

This matters, and then it, you know, deters people from doing it, because they're going to know there actually is consequences if they think, oh, you can just get away with this. Of course people are going to make more sites, but if they see, make them an example. Mr. Deepaks, if you are able to

[Unknown Advocate/Coalition Member]

do this in the dark, it's in the darkness that this thing thrives and exposing this. Exposing Mr. Deepfakes, exposing the pain and abuse that is the real world impact of this new technology and seeing how this is going, I think that's our biggest hope.

[Paris Hilton]

Talking about it is a way to make people understand the impact it has on people's lives and really makes a difference. And for me, when this happened, I was just taught to stay silent, don't bring any attention, don't give it oxygen. So now to be able to use my voice, it's been a journey because in the beginning, it was just. I couldn't even talk about it. I was like, I just want to pretend this never happened. But now, knowing it's happening to millions and millions of people around the world, I just can't stay silent.

[Lori Siegel]

It's even more personal now that she's

[Paris Hilton]

a mom becoming a mother has changed my life in so many ways and really made me think about the future of what I want for my kids. And the fact that I'm able to help shape that future is incredibly powerful.

[Lori Siegel]

Paris wanted to help us take our story to the main stage. We partnered with her and her company, 1111 Media, and we turned our investigation into a groundbreaking 14 part TikTok series in late May 2026.

[Paris Hilton]

I'm Paris Hilton and I'm teaming up with journalist Laurie Siegel to take the story.

[Lori Siegel]

And the impact of this abuse reached 32 million views. And the best part, we started hearing from so many people, parents, other survivors and folks who wanted to help. But Paris and I weren't done. Just as our TikTok series was launching into the world, we teamed up to bring our deepfake findings into the room where laws are made.

[John (Lori's husband)]

So we're going right now to see

[Lori Siegel]

if we can get this passed.

[John (Lori's husband)]

No pressure.

[Lori Siegel]

I was about to testify for a bill in California that would strengthen protection for victims of deepfakes.

[Senator Angelique Ashby]

This bill creates a framework to hold AI users accountable by creating clear legal standing.

[Lori Siegel]

Senator Angelique Ashby was the one to introduce SB 1111 to the California legislature

[Senator Angelique Ashby]

for victims and defining the boundaries of AI technology. SB 1111 establishes violations in the right of publicity law and false impersonation law for using a person's voice or likeness to create a digital replica without their consent. As technology changes, California must continue to advance our efforts and our standards to protect against AI abuse and violence and those who are impacted by it.

[Lori Siegel]

And then it was my turn. My name is Lori Siegel. I'm an investigative reporter.

[John (Lori's husband)]

Porter.

[Lori Siegel]

I had the complicated task of boiling a year long investigation down to two minutes. The images may be fake, but from years in the trenches covering this type of abuse, I cannot emphasize this enough. The impact is real.

[Narrator/Reporter Commentary]

Bring back to the committee for questions, comments or motion.

[Yvonne Meer (Chief Deputy City Attorney)]

Cortez.

[Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]

Yeah, I. Well, one, I was going to move the bill and. And two, I just appreciate the author for bringing this forward. Honestly, it's. It is utterly terrifying to just see what's been happening with AI and the way that it's been weaponized against women, against children. It's just chilling because it could happen to any single one of us.

[Lori Siegel]

And then a vote.

[Narrator/Reporter Commentary]

Okay, we have a motion which is due. Pass to the floor.

[Shannon (Mother of victim)]

The Senate floor.

[Narrator/Reporter Commentary]

Please call the roll.

[Nicole Boucher]

SB11.

[Paris Hilton]

11 Ashby.

[Nicole Boucher]

Motion is due.

[Narrator/Reporter Commentary]

Pass to the floor.

[Shannon (Mother of victim)]

Araguin.

[KFC Advertiser]

Aye.

[Nicole Boucher]

Araguin, aye.

[Shannon (Mother of victim)]

Sayarto.

[Nicole Boucher]

Aye. Sierra.

[Shannon (Mother of victim)]

So I Caballero. Cortese. Cortese. I. Perez.

[Lori Siegel]

I Perez.

[Shannon (Mother of victim)]

I Weiner.

[Narrator/Reporter Commentary]

Keep that bill and call for absent members.

[Kal Penn]

Thank you very much.

[John (Lori's husband)]

Honestly, like, how cool is it that I was talking to David. David's back and like, now I'm talking to lawmakers. And we just got something through.

[Lori Siegel]

My producer, Roxy was there with me.

[Roxy (Producer)]

It was like, not just screaming into a void. It was like they read it, they listened to it, they passed it, and then like, yeah, that. We talked to Senator Ashby about how. What is next? How does it go from what we are today to the next thing to the next thing, the next thing. And just knowing that There are people 100% devoted and dedicated to passing laws like that, it was like, okay, wow. That's a whole nother part of the army that we just peeked into.

[Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]

Yeah.

[Roxy (Producer)]

It's like we're using our tools, which is media storytelling, you know, whatever journalism. They're using their tools, you know, then victims or survivors are using their voices. Like, it was kind of, like, cool to know that it's. It had been. It felt like it had just been us for a long time.

[Lori Siegel]

Yeah.

[Roxy (Producer)]

And it definitely wasn't. And that felt cool to know that there's all these other paths that to change that are happening.

[Lori Siegel]

And it was so cool because it was immediately past the next phase. And I was emotional because it was like, okay, taking this and connecting these dots and then you begin to really understand, like, how change happens. What we learned is that change doesn't happen in a vacuum, and it certainly doesn't happen alone. It's through community and coalition building, but also through the bravery of the survivors who speak out and speak up. All of the people that you've heard in this series, each one of them has turn their pain into advocacy. Joanne in Los Angeles continues to share her story across platforms.

[John (Lori's husband)]

It can be scary and nerve wracking to speak up about it publicly, but at the same time, it's important to take back our image. I feel like that's the only way we can hopefully affect change.

[Lori Siegel]

As for Bree in Tennessee, I want to use my story. My attorney asked me that once. He's like, how far do you want to take this?

[Nadia Khan Roberts]

And I was like, to the very fucking edge. Like, yeah, it stops with me. I want to make this better for other people.

[Lori Siegel]

She helped change laws in her state. Same with Molly in Minnesota.

[Nadia Khan Roberts]

I cannot stand the idea of just letting it be. We want to fight and I'm here for it.

[Lori Siegel]

Shannon and John, whose son was a victim of sextortion, they won't stop either.

[Shannon (Mother of victim)]

Unfortunately, we're not fighting for our son. Our son has already passed. We're doing everything we can to make sure this doesn't happen to somebody else's kid.

[Lori Siegel]

And Nadia and Luke, whose daughter was a victim of Deep fakes, they started a non profit to help victims but also educate teens to prevent this abuse from happening in the first place.

[Luke (Father of victim)]

How can we find teenagers who we can sort of train on the ethics of AI and let them be mentors to younger like preteens and have these workshops and these experiences so that it's not reactive, it's proactive, that we become sort of an entity of hope.

[Lori Siegel]

This is how we take this fight into the future. We do it together. This story is isn't over. We're going to continue the conversation right here on this podcast. We'll talk to experts, we'll bring your questions to leaders and we'll share the real world devastation that this digital harm causes. We have already heard from people more victims of Deepfake abuse and we're going to bring their stories to this podcast. If you've been a victim of Deepfake abuse and you need help or resources or you want to share your story, we want to hear from you. Go to BeyondMrDeepFakes.com and if you've got a tip, something in the tech space that you want investigated, find me on social media at Mostly Human Media or email [e-mail]. Mostly Human is a production of iHeart podcasts in Mostly Human Media. Searching for Mr. Deepfakes is a multi year investigation in partnership with BFD and 1111 Media. It's produced and edited by Lori Siegel, Nicole Boucher, Lauren Hanson, Abu Zafar, Roxy Hunt and Tony Castle Sound design and mixing by Derek Clements and Abu Zafar. If you want to see our short form vertical docu series on Mr. Deepfakes, go to Mostly Human Media on TikTok or Paris Hilton's TikTok channel. Find us all on socials at Mostly Human Media. You can also watch Mostly human on our YouTube page and if you want to get in touch, please email [e-mail] we'd love to hear from you. Oh and please rate and review the show and share it with your friends. See you next week.

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