Reality TV personality Georgia Harrison has opened up about her struggles relating to a sexually explicit video of her that remains available online. Harrison has been vocal about her previous partner Stephen Bear being found guilty of sharing private footage of them having sex. He was subsequently jailed for 21 months in 2023, and although Harrison waived her right to anonymity back then, she continues to struggle with her video being so widely accessible online.
Harrison is currently fronting a new two-part series on ITV, which looks at the issue of deepfakes and image-based sexual abuse. During the documentary, she reveals how challenging it was to face how widespread the video still is. Harrison claims that many people contact her regularly and send her clips of the video, and the issue is always in the back of her mind. She has now advocated that more awareness is necessary to help victims of this problem, especially as companies and the government must come together to address the issue head-on, thereby making it impossible for any privacy violation videos to go viral in the future.
The previous Conservative government passed the Online Safety Act in 2023, which required social media companies to protect users from harmful content. However, last month, Labour’s technology secretary Peter Kyle criticized the UK internet safety laws as being very uneven and unsatisfactory, indicating there were still issues regarding the protection of privacy online.
Harrison also spoke of being regularly contacted by mothers whose children have been affected by deepfakes, in which fake videos are created using artificial intelligence. She says it causes the same emotion of humiliation and a complete violation of privacy as the real material. As part of her two-part documentary, the reality TV star met with representatives from porn sites as well as journalists and victims of revenge porn, and she believes that eventually, everyone will live in a world where unconsented imagery is far harder to share.
Bear was found guilty of voyeurism and two counts of disclosing private sexual photographs with the intent to cause distress, leading to a sentence of 21 months in prison. Released in 2024, he had served about half his sentence in custody. Meanwhile, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology confirmed that it is becoming a criminal offence to share or threaten to share intimate images, including deepfakes without consent. The department is closely monitoring these issues and heavily focused on proactive measures to avoid these privacy violations, especially among victims, particularly women
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