Non-Consensual Sexual Deepfakes as Direct Personal Harm

Abstract Non-Consensual Sexual Deepfakes (NCSD) are a growing issue of our onlife experience. We argue that, far from harming individuals merely indirectly, NCSD constitute a Direct Personal Harm to the persons they depict, because they can be understood as parts of their personal identity. We defend this claim by developing a narrative theory of identity according to which a person is constituted by their life story—a story that is not solely self-authored but socially shaped and often beyond one’s control. On this basis, we argue that digital artifacts such as NCSD can become elements of a person’s narrative identity. We ground our account in a four-dimensionalist metaphysics that treats persons as aggregates of both biological and digital temporal parts. Finally, by examining the verbal behavior of imaginary and actual victims of NCSD, we show that this account is less counterintuitive than it may initially appear and helps make sense of why many experience NCSD as violations of their person, rather than merely of their representation.