Deepfake Technology and Gender-Based Violence: A Scoping Review

Abstract

Online violence against women (OVAW) is a growing global problem with deepfakes in gender-based violence as one manifestation of this that has recently attracted considerable attention. This scoping review aims to explore emerging complexities in current academic understandings of deepfake in relation to its use in gender-based violence. The review considers how these issues impact and shape what is currently known about deepfakes in relation to OVAW. Articles were collected between July and September 2024 and then filtered drawing on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Review guidelines. Six research databases were searched using 12 search terms compiled by three of the article authors. This resulted in a total number of 3148 articles that were filtered to identify 397 articles that were reviewed in full. The subset was further filtered in order to focus on psychology and the social sciences resulting in a total of 64 articles for analysis. As psychology and the social sciences begin to capture the implications of deepfake creation and dissemination, in the context of online sexual violence, there is a need to investigate how deepfakes are used to silence women in public spaces online, as well as empirically acknowledging the inherent gendered systemic discriminations within deepfake technology and its uses. While important, research must move beyond perceived credibility and detection techniques of deepfakes and toward an analysis of intersectional power dynamics at play in this form of gender-based violence.

Keywords: deepfake; image-based sexual abuse; online gender-based violence; online perpetration; scoping review; technology-facilitated sexual abuse.