Cheerleader Mom is Arrested for Using Deepfakes to Make it Look Like Her Daughter's Rivals Were 'Naked, Drinking and Smoking'
Dammit. Dammit all. The most important time in the most important offseason the Patriots have had in 21 years begins, and here the universe has to drop a bomb on me. One that I can't ignore. I don't ask existence to work for me, but is it too much to ask that it not work against me? There are days a story about a crazy mom, cheerleaders, vindictiveness, crime, jealousy, and the absolute worst kind of sports parenting would be welcome in my world. Slow news days when a package dropped on my front steps by the Fates would be a gift from the heavens.
This is not one of those days. But in Blog Life, ours is not to question the timing. All we can do is what we can with the news that is given us. And in this case, I have no choice but to post. Forgive me if I'm slow to respond to some breaking news. But I'm just doing my job.
Source - A Pennsylvania mom has been arrested for allegedly creating libelous fake photos of girls on her daughter's cheerleading team.
Raffaela Spone, 50, who hails from the town of Chalfront, was slapped with harassment and cyber harassment charges over the saga late last week.
According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, Spone is accused of creating 'deepfake' photos and videos showing three members of the Victory Vipers cheer squad 'naked, drinking and smoking'.
The newspaper reports that the three girls had fallen out with Spone's daughter and she wanted them booted off the team. ...
Spone allegedly created the deepfakes by 'mapping the victims' social media photos onto other images' in a bid to make them look real.
The mom is then accused of anonymously sending the graphic pictures and videos to the coaches of the cheerleading team.
She also purportedly sent the doctored images directly to the teenage girls, along with message to one of them urging her to 'kill herself'. ...
Detectives traced four phone numbers that had sent the deepfake images and tied them all to a telemarketing website.
They then traced data from that website to an IP address at Spone’s house.
Police say a subsequent search of Spone's phone uncovered the text messages and deepfake images that she had sent to the three victims and the team's coaches.
Like I said when this guy started making this hyper-real Tom Cruise deepfakes, very soon this technology will make it so the thing you'll be able to trust least in this world will be your own eyes.
Well, like with any incredible new technological advancement, it's only a matter of time before it falls into the wrong hands. And the group we have to worry about more than terrorists or the Communists or Alt-Right or Big Tech companies is the radical fringe element I'll call Psycho Sports Parents.
Make no mistake, Raffaela Spone might be the first to weaponize deepfake technology in an effort to further her child's career. But by no means will she be the last. For every parent who'll be shocked and appalled by this news, there'll be a Psycho Sports Parent Googling "deepfake" to figure out how they can use it. It happens with every other new tech. Why should we think it would stop with Raffaela?
There was probably an hour between the invention of email and the first time a parent used it to bitch to a coach about how they're costing her little Blue Chip prospect a scholarship. A half hour between the first cell phone camera and someone using it to take blackmail photos of a coach cheating on their spouse or something to get their kid more playing time. And God only knows what they've done with videos and drones to advance their precious babies' careers.
This is a true story: In the town I used to coach football, there was a head coach at a younger level who got let go for some reason or other. The following year, when the whole town's program - so seven grades and hundreds of kids - showed up for mandatory preseason weigh ins, none of their names were in the database. They'd all been deleted. Like with Raffaela Spone, police were called in and traced the hack to the IP address of, you guessed it, Coach McScumsuckery, who took his pettiness out on hundreds of players he'd never met. Just because he could.
So I promise you, this deranged, Frau Bleucher-looking:
… crackpot might be doing pioneering work in the field of trying to ruin the lives of high school girls just to further her own child's interests, but some other parent is already trying to improve upon her creations as we speak. Evil, diabolical parents who will stop at nothing and don't care how many corpses they leave strewn in their wake have always existed and always will. Deepfake CGI just gives them another superweapon at their disposal. I shudder to think what the next one will be.