Face-swap porn trend humiliates teachers

PORN bullies are targeting teachers in a cruel new online trend that can be so sophisticated it’s nearly impossible to tell the images being circulated are fakes.

The federal eSafety Commission has investigated a string of digitally altered images involving teachers, where innocuous headshots have been placed on pornographic images and spread on social media.

Commissioner Julie InmanGrant said morphed images were a major new issue for her office, and some were so well done it was almost impossible to tell they were fake.

“It is a form of ‘sextortion’ and image-based abuse,” Ms Inman-Grant said.

In one case, a teacher lodged a complaint with the commission after she became aware an image of her was being circulated among school students via Snapchat. The image used a picture of her face, sourced from an online school newsletter, photoshopped onto a woman’s naked body from a still photo taken from a porn movie.

The commission has issued new advice to women on how to deal with a range of genderbased threats online.

It covers acts such as “doxing”, which is to publish someone’s address or phone number, and “sextortion”, when intimate images are used to blackmail.

It notes the emergence of “face-swapping” and “morphporn” as a means to humiliate women. Laws governing the commission will be reviewed in July. Ms Inman-Grant hoped for broader powers.