opinion

Clothed one moment, nude the next: How women could be 'stripped' at the click of a button.

The future of porn is arriving and it’s terrifying.

Augmented reality is set to allow users to use an app to ‘undress’ everyday people. Your colleague at work, the man who serves you coffee, the cute guy at the bar… could all ‘see’ you naked without your consent. Without you undressing, even.

Because it won’t be you naked, it will be an augmented version of yourself, with an image of your face on top. The sickening illusion will let users believe it is you sitting there, talking to them, leaning in and asking them a question without any clothes on. The implications are criminal.

“Augmented reality will allow you to fully undress any woman you’re looking at,” Futurologist Dr Ian Pearson told The Sun.

“You could take every single person in the field of view as you walk down Oxford Street and virtually undress them.”

Not only that, but the technology will likely become available in app form. Allowing men – because it will mostly be men, won’t it? – to upload any image of any person they want to see ‘naked’ and watch that happen.

“You’ll be able to upload a photo of anyone you want,” Dr Pearson said.

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Think of the implications.

Yes there is the deplorable idea of being undressed as you walk down the street to work. Your head plastered upon a naked body, a stranger watching as ‘your’ hips move and your privacy is forgotten.

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But it will also further enable predators to bully and manipulate their victims online. Already, the law is falling behind in keeping people safe from cyber bullying and image-based abuse.

Amanda Todd – a 15-year-old from Canada who took her own life after being blackmailed with naked images of herself – is the perfect, heartbreaking example.

Todd was in Grade Seven when a man she met online convinced her to send a photograph of her naked breasts. She did and, after that, he requested she give him a “show” or else he’d share the photo with the world.

Eventually – after years of moving schools and trying to get away – he did send the photograph public and Todd, in a YouTube video that went viral after her death, told the camera how she had suffered anxiety, depression and panic disorder after being cyber bullied and sexually exploited by this one, sick individual.

But imagine if he didn’t need to ask for her photograph. Imagine if all he needed to do was upload her picture – perhaps a Facebook profile picture, or one from Instagram – and virtual reality could render her naked and manipulate her into a compromising position.

She died on October 10, 2012. She was only 15.

Snapshot from Amanda Todd's YouTube video.

More recently, there was the 2014 iCloud Hack in which private, intimate photographs of celebrities were shared with the world. Actress Jennifer Lawrence, 27, was a victim of the hack and dubbed the offence a "sex crime".

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"I feel like I got gang-banged by the f*cking planet - like, there's not one person in the world that is not capable of seeing these intimate photos of me," Lawrence told Vanity Fair in November this year.

"You can just be at a barbecue and somebody can just pull them up on their phone. That was a really impossible thing to process."

Again, imagine if no hack was necessary. And instead your face could be the identifying factor of a body, created in virtual reality, and playing out some stranger's fantasy.

What chance do women have, when technology is taking away even the possibility of consent?

Jennifer Lawrence was the victim of online sexual exploitation. Image via Getty.
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Sex, as we know, sells.

And perhaps this is why some of the greatest minds in technology work in the porn industry. We have sex robots before regular robots. Virtual reality porn leading the way in other uses for virtual reality.

But it's one thing that these minds are being used to make money off of others' depravities. It's another thing altogether when their purpose is to abuse their subjects, without any heed for personal privacy.

Using virtual reality to 'show' people naked is not pornography. It's image-based sexual abuse.

Already, fake pornographic films can be created using the faces of celebrities. This isn't good enough.

How long before it's the faces of everyday people? And how long before it's not film at all, and instead people are watching someone 'doing it' stark naked when they're really being served their morning coffee and thinking about their next meeting?

When will it stop? Who will step up and make it stop?