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  • Writer's pictureJeannine Hyde

Meet Noelle Martin

Updated: Jan 13, 2021

Australia's young person of the year 2019, activist, and victim of deepfake porn.


When Noelle was studying law at a university in NSW Australia, she did a reverse image search of one of her pictures. To her surprise, after doing so she came across pictures of her online that had been doctored to make her appear as though she was naked.


Noelle spoke out about what was happening to her but the abuse didn't stop. Some of the perpatraitors even took images of her when she was doing interviews with the media and deepfaked those on to nude photographs.


The abuse eventually progressed from images to deepfaked explicit videos. The perpatraitors went as far as posting her full name in the titles of the videos to make it seem real.

"I was effectively fighting a never ending battle and there were no specific laws around this type of abuse at the time, so after years I decided to speak out."

Noelle continued to speak out about her experience and was involved in the law reform efforts in NSW Australia which became the first state in the world to make doctored sexual images illegal.


This is the TedTalk Noelle presented in Perth and she became a face for the movement.


Celebrities are often targeted in deepfake porn, as thousands of images of them are easy to access online. However the rise in the use of social media platforms such as Instagram or Facebook means that regular people share hundreds of images of their faces, which can be accessed by almost anyone and can then be edited onto images or videos.


Noelle told me "It's already hard enough to report or speak out about sexual abuse, taking into account all these factors, that's what scares me, the ordinary women who are going to have to face such an uphill battle against such a dangerous weapon, and there is very little that can be done to debunk it."


Noelle used a negative experience that happened to her to try and change things for the better for other victims.




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