A 29-year-old woman has revealed the stomach-churning moment she realised a stranger in a pub had turned a photo of her into a highly sexualised image. 

Digital creator Jade was out with a group of friends at Perth’s Scarborough beach last Friday night, when they struck up a “friendly” chat with a group of men at the same venue.

At some point, one the men belonging to the other group took a photo of Jade without her consent.

Jade says initially she didn’t understand the gravity of the situation.

“They showed me because they thought it was funny, they thought it was a joke. Initially I brushed it off,” she told the Daily Mail.

“For some reason, us being friendly to them opened up an invitation for them to take a photo of me, put it into AI and then alter it into sexualised content… The picture looked like I was making out with one of those men.”

She said it wasn’t until later she really processed what had happened, at which point she began to see the bigger picture of how boundaries around consent can get muddied in the age of AI.

“What disturbed me almost as much as what happened was realising that my first instinct had been to minimise it rather than recognise that my consent had been completely removed from the situation,” Jade said. 

After the exchange occurred one of the men reached out to Jade, sending her a message to apologise and claiming the photo was intended as a private joke between him and his friend.

“Clearly [it] wasn’t a joke to you at all and I see that now. Just so you know I deleted the picture as soon as I took it. It was meant to be a funny joke of my friend… From the bottom of my heart, I am sorry about all this,” the message read.

The matter has since been reported to both the bar where the incident occurred and the local police.

Yesterday, Jade posted a statement on Instagram saying, “I’m okay. But that doesn’t make what happened okay” She added, “misogyny has existed for generations. Now it has new technology at its fingertips.”

Jade is now warning people who make AI deepfakes to think about what a brief giggle for them could cost the subject of their content.

“The intention might be a five-minute laugh between friends, but the potential consequences for the person depicted can extend far beyond those five minutes.”