Our conversation often returns to Vienna, who is at the forefront of Cally’s activism. Vienna was born in difficult circumstances. “The birth was stressful,” Cally reflects, referring to being in labour for 32 hours before having an emergency C-section, “and I went through a lot with her dad [Luis].” In 2018, Cally publicly accused Luis of being unfaithful to her while she was pregnant with Vienna – something he would later deny. “I didn’t have the motherhood experience that I would’ve liked,” she adds, “but I knew I had this little girl there with me… I felt like I had somebody watching me. And when she gets older, I want her to look up to me and understand what things are acceptable, what boundaries are, and things like that.” She finishes, “It was a tough time, but I think she was there to save me, in a strange way, and now we’re inseparable.”
Motherhood profoundly influenced Cally’s decision to speak up about her experience of deepfake abuse. She tells me, “I kind of just forgot about me and thought more about the future generation, my daughter, and how I can help change this. And that’s when I thought, ‘No, I need to do something.’ And I said to my management, ‘Look, I’ve got a little girl, and this is scary. I didn’t know this was this big. And it’s getting bigger, so it needs to be stopped.’”
Cally continues, “I want Vienna to grow up in a safe environment and to not worry about her identity being used in a form that she didn’t consent to – that’s important not just for my daughter, but for anyone that has children growing up in this world; that they’re protected and that they’re safe.”
We return to the moment Cally first discovered the deepfake images. What was going through her mind? “I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry,” she starts. “I was really, really shocked.” Cally’s (very understandable) shock subsided, only to be replaced by panic. “I thought, ‘Oh, my God, my career… Me being a mum… Who’s seen this? Who thinks it’s real?’”
“It makes you feel like you should be ashamed,” Cally continues. “And really, you shouldn’t have to feel like that – even if you have taken a nude photo of yourself and shared it with a partner. That doesn’t make it OK for them to share it without your consent.”
Cally immediately took to Instagram to share her experience. “I got floods of messages from everybody telling me [deepfake abuse] is a thing, it’s happening, it’s a pandemic, and we need to do something about it. So, then I thought, ‘Right, I’m going to have to do something about this and make some change.’”
For Cally and her management team, the next few days were spent manically trying to get the deepfake images removed and reporting the incident to the police. This involved a “long, draining process” of contacting Google, Ofcom, and the website hosting the offending images. “I spent a lot of time and energy chasing [them],” she notes. “It was such a stressful time.”
Still, Cally describes her situation as “lucky” because, shortly after she shared her experience on social media, the offending images were removed. “However,” she notes, “there was no justice for me.” Thanks, in part, to the inadequacy of the criminal law on image-based abuse, no efforts were made to find the person who created the deepfake images of Cally. “There was no follow-up, there was no IP address tracing for who created this image, and there’s nothing to stop them from taking another image off my social media and doing it again.”