After she started her YouTube channel, University of Pennsylvania student Olga Loiek found out her face was being used to create deepfakes for China’s social media, writes Matthew Loh for the Business Insider.

She was alerted to her likeness being misused after some of her 15,000 subscribers started lauding both her self-empowerment videos and her command of the Chinese language.

Loiek, who does not speak Chinese, soon received a warning that somebody was trying to impersonate her with a link to a video on Xiaohongshu, a Chinese social media platform.

In the video, she seems to be speaking Chinese as photos of the Kremlin and Russian leader Vladimir Putin scroll around the screen. Once she started translating it, she realized that the woman bearing her face was speaking glowingly of Sino-Russian ties and bemoaning sanctions on Russia, while selling Russian products.

Loiek, who is Ukrainian, was outraged.

“I felt violated because these were things I would never, never say in my life,” she said.

With the help of her followers, she was able to remove the dupe from Xiaohongshu by February 25.

However, that has not prevented other accounts with her face from popping up.

Read more about Olga Loiek and various instances of deepfakes in the Business Insider.

_____