The face isn’t real, but her story is: Why W5 used AI on an interview with a rape survivor

Infiltrating a global network of men who drug, rape and record their partners, W5: Avery Haines Investigates exposes the brazen criminals.

Warning: This story contains graphic details and allegations of sexual assault

This series is part of an ongoing W5 investigation that has infiltrated a global online network of men who are secretly drugging, raping, filming and sharing the videos of their unsuspecting wives and intimate partners. Watch W5’s full documentary, Sleeping with the Enemy, Saturday at 9 p.m. on CTV.

In the opening minutes of our documentary, Sleeping With the Enemy, viewers meet “Melanie,” a Canadian woman whose life was shattered by a Facebook message on the weekend of her bridal shower.

Attached was a screengrab of her unconscious body being sexually assaulted. She would soon discover that an ex-boyfriend, someone she had dated as a teenager, had drugged, raped and recorded crimes against her for years, without her knowledge.

Those videos, some showing sexual torture, are being traded like currency within an online network of men who secretly rape their wives and girlfriends and then share, trade and sell videos of their abuse with other men.

Our investigation reveals this isn’t an isolated case, but part of a sprawling, online community where rape and degradation is normalized, organized and commodified. The scale of the abuse is staggering.

But how do you tell Melanie’s story and those of other survivors we interviewed, when the people most harmed fear being seen?

That question led us to the groundbreaking decision to use artificial intelligence to digitally reconstruct the faces of survivors.

Not to distort the truth, but to deliver it.

Beyond the blur

Facial expression invokes empathy and yet survivors of sexual violence are usually shown in silhouette, with their faces blurred or pixilated. Viewers are asked to feel something for people they can’t fully see.

Our team didn’t think that was good enough for Melanie or for the others we interviewed.

Using AI, we were able to create new, fictional faces, mapped to their real expressions. Their actual face is never shown, but their digitally altered faces move with their words.

Viewers can see emotion. Sadness. Anger. Fear. Defiance. It brings survivors out of the shadows.

This technology, often maligned in the era of deepfakes, can be used for more than deception. It can be used for truth. We are transparent with our audience: what you’re seeing isn’t real. But what they are saying is.

• More W5 investigations

How safe is it?

The AI-generated faces are built by blending the real face of the survivor with a computer-created synthetic face. The final image does not retain the original features in a way that could be reverse-engineered. You cannot use AI to “unmask” the survivor, because the real face simply isn’t there anymore.

We have been completely transparent about our use of the technology, burning the words “digitally altered face” onto the screen every time their faces appear. We also flagged, in voice-over, that their faces had been digitally altered.

Groundbreaking decision

The decision wasn’t made lightly. We chose not to use the digitally altered faces in shorter news pieces that were broadcast on CTV National News over the last two weeks. But we believe it was the right technology outside of the news division.

This has rarely, if ever, been done before in Canada. There are legitimate concerns in an age where trust in the media is waning. But in the end, the survivors gave us our answer. They feel seen, but not exposed.

Their faces aren’t real. But their stories are. The trauma is. The network is. And what was taken from these women — their control, their memory, their consent — is finally being reclaimed.

More on this story:

• Allegations involving his own young daughter surface against Canadian at centre of W5 investigation into videotaped sexual assaults
• ‘She will slowly disappear’: Second man under investigation for potentially drugging, raping and filming a woman
• W5 reveals disturbing ease with which network of rapists buy, make and administer drugs to abuse women
• Connections between network of men who drug, rape and record women, W5 investigation reveals
• Canadian man at centre of widescale W5 sexual assault investigation arrested and charged