The Box — the world's first anti-deepfake wearable
Also inside #10: 🎥 the last few months at Attention 🎁 mystery link
Big news today — the launch of Attention’s first major project! After a months-long collaboration, Nitya Kuthiala and I are thrilled to present to you:
👉 The Box 👈
I’ll tell you more about The Box in a second, but first, let me give you two options for how to experience it:
Clueless! Jump straight in with zero context.
Clueful! Read about it below.
Great, you’ve presumably chosen. So before we dig in, a quick ask:
PLEASE HELP BOOST!
We’re super proud of what we’ve built, and we want to reach tons of people with it.
If you like The Box:
Please quickly like, comment or share one of the below social posts!
👉 The Box on LinkedIn (← most helpful)
Your early like or share could make a huge difference.
Now, back to what the hell this thing is.
🤯 WHAT IS THE BOX?
The Box is the world’s first anti-deepfake wearable.
And no — phew — it’s not real.
It’s a satirical, dystopian startup that Nitya and I created to illustrate a world where we fail to stem the tide of adult deepfakes targeting women.
Deepfakes come in all shapes and sizes, but (surprise surprise) — the internet is increasingly deluged with non-consensual deepfake porn, 99% of which targets women.
It’s incredibly easy to make deepfake porn, since sketchy companies have taken powerful open source AI models and wrapped them in user-friendly apps that let you instantly ‘nudify’ someone with just a single photo.
Some high profile services, like Mr. DeepFakes, have been forced to shut down — but others quickly rise to fill the gaps they leave behind. One campaign finds more than 9,500 websites dedicated to what they call ‘image-based sexual abuse’.
If we don’t enforce laws against this kind of content and track down the shadowy figures behind these services, we could end up in a world where more and more women decide participating in public life is not worth the hassle.
That’s not a good world. We figured that instead of writing about it, we could try raise the alarm through something a little more visual and engaging. Maybe even show the fictional tech product someone might start selling to ‘make women safe’ in that world — to fix all the problems of tech with…more tech.
🎥 DIRECTING ATTENTION
This is Directing Attention, where we share a little about what's going on behind-the-scenes at Attention HQ.
First ever collaboration (thank you Nitya!)
I’m thrilled that we’ve finally put The Box out there for many reasons — most of all, how cool it’s been to work with Nitya Kuthiala, who was the first person to get in touch about my offer for Attention readers to become collaborators (could you be next?).
It’s a dream for me that our collaboration is finally coming into contact with the real world, not least because it means Attention is no longer just about me angrily hammering down on my keyboard.
So — huge thanks to Nitya, not just for the ton of energy and thought she put into The Box, but for the leap of faith to make something very edgy and niche with me.
How The Box fits with Attention
The second reason I’m happy about The Box is that it’s a lovely example of what Attention is all about.
Attention will feature three types of content:
🎯: Playful tech analysis and activism — make tech fun!
🤡: Satire ridiculing the tech world and its bigwigs — make fun of tech!
👾: Interactive mini-sites (‘creative coding’) — make fun tech!
The Box hits all three in one — there’s the satire 🤡, in the creative coding format 👾 of a startup landing page, with the activism edge 🎯 of highlighting deepfake porn and why it matters (see The Box’s About page).
How we made The Box
Nitya and I first started talking about the terrifying rise of adult deepfakes, and the impact on women, in our very first meeting in London back in March.
Then, somewhere in our sprawling empire of Google Docs, Nitya had the idea of ads for fictional deepfake protection products and services. We went down the rabbit hole: make-up to distort your face? Earrings with lasers to take out cameras? ‘Public’ spaces run by big tech, which guarantee you deepfake safety in exchange for a monthly subscription? Actors you can hire to ‘be you’ in public?
We whittled dozens of these ideas down into a single satisfyingly blunt concept: a box that you put over your head. And we decided instead of an ad, let’s do it as a startup.
After that, we went through months of writing, branding, designing, coding and road-testing. I became unhealthily and inexplicably obsessed with crafting a unique look and feel for this totally fake product, which I’ll defend by saying that somehow, it feels like an enhancement to the satire to take this ridiculous, appalling idea and put it in a really pretty frame.
Those months of work are, incidentally, why I’ve been so silent on this newsletter — I’ve been endlessly tinkering with pixels on wearthebox.com.
Heavy vs. light
Part of the inspiration for spending so much time on The Box was this hugely popular Substack piece. It made me decide to pause weekly newsletters and spend more time on bigger, intermittent projects — I felt like the things I’d made for Attention so far were rather ‘light’ (with the exception of PikTop) and that I should try spend my time on fewer ‘heavy’ pieces.
I’m still going back and forth on this one. I may restart weekly newsletters, but slim them down even further (e.g. just one interesting link a week). Let me know if you have strong feelings about this!
New home page for Attention!
Other than the work on The Box, I’ve also completely revamped Attention’s home page — and added a bunch of my writing from different places and years so that now, hopefully, Attention feels much more like a real thing.
🔗 FOR YOUR ATTENTION
That’s all for now! I’ll be back in your inbox with more interesting things very soon.