Woman issues warning to public after brother-in-law 'deepfaked' explicit images of her
A woman was horrified to learn that the brother-in-law her family enjoyed a close relationship with had secretly created more than 70 sexualised deepfake images of her.
Sophie Parrish, a florist from Southport, Merseyside, received an anonymous message from a stranger back in 2022.
Attached was a picture of her in lingerie on her bed she knew she hadn’t taken.
“The panic started to rise,” Sophie told Key Witness: The Moment.
Advert
The stranger, a ‘honeytrap’ who caught men’s bad behaviour to expose it to their families, then sickeningly revealed the image had been sent by Sophie’s own brother-in-law Karl Marshall.
Marshall. 49, had been in the family for 12 years by this point, and he and Sophie’s husband were ‘very close’ and used to go to football matches and play bowls together.
“I had no reason to trust him,” Sophie said.
But when she confronted Marshall, his ‘breathing changed’ and she realised the tipster’s allegations were ‘100 percent true’.
The image of Sophie was a deepfake, when someone’s face is transplanted onto another person’s body to make it look like they’re in a scenario they never participated in. Horrifyingly, it was one of many that Marshall had created of her.
She eventually discovered that 72 deepfakes had been created using her face, including one that had been downloaded more than 2,000 times.
Sophie said it was like being ‘undressed digitally’, adding: “I really could not get my head around the fact that he could be so vindictive and so nasty.
“I don't know who's seen those images. I don't know how far they've spread.
“It was someone who was meant to love me like a little sister. I was little sis.
“It didn't make sense, and I didn't think he could be so cruel.”
Marshall was arrested in 2023, but at that point there was no law against creating sexualised deepfakes of someone and sharing them online.
Sophie was appalled and launched a petition to the government to make it illegal to create and share explicit deepfake images without consent.
Amazingly, she helped change the law, and from January 2024 it became a crime to share non-consensual explicit deepfake images of someone.
While Marshall couldn’t be charged for historic offences, after the law changed, another victim came forward.
In October 2024, Marshall pleaded guilty to voyeurism, sharing intimate photos and making indecent images of a child and sentenced to two years and two months.
Following her ordeal, Sophie has a powerful message for anyone who has created deepfakes or looks at them for their own pleasure.
She said: “I urge you to think about the victim, to think about how that might impact their life, to think about the fact there's a real person behind that photo.
“This is something that could stop their career, that could break down their marriage. That their children might one day find out about and I urge you to really think about whether it's worth doing that for your own pleasure.”
Simon Fearn