What stinks about #midriffgate is Victorian MP Georgie Purcell had no say in it

Whether it was a bloke or AI in the Georgie Purcell case, images doctored without our consent are simply not on.

This week, Taylor Swift was on the receiving end of another level of technological abuse when explicit AI-generated images of her circulated on X, formerly known as Twitter. Picture: AFP

If there is such a thing as automated software that increases the size of female breasts and simultaneously etches out a sylph-like midriff, I imagine women across the country are willing to give it a go. What stinks about #midriffgate is that Victorian MP Georgie Purcell had no say in it.

What happened over at Channel Nine stinks for a few reasons. It stinks that Purcell’s photo was doctored. It stinks that it was doctored in the manner it was, sexing up a woman. It stinks that we haven’t got to the bottom of how it happened. Unless we’re talking about a murder, generally the cover-up is worse than the original sin. Finding out how this happened matters.

If there was a human hand involved in turning Purcell into a sex kitten, in a strange way that’s more comforting. The person can be pistol whipped before being sent to Coventry for a few weeks to reflect on how truly dumb it was to alter Purcell’s photo.

I am not one to rush to judgment, so I will say this slowly. I reckon a bloke did this. The original photo of Purcell was already a cracker. The Animal Justice MP is an attractive woman. She may have a few more tattoos than I’ve seen outside of certain parts of Adelaide, but still, by Australian political standards, she’s hot. Is that why some complete nob behind the scenes at the Nine News Melbourne bulletin thought they should use technology to increase the size of her breasts and slice up a perfectly respectable white dress to reveal a fake bare midriff? Seriously. It’s 2024. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. This kind of weird stuff is usually reserved for socially defective drongos on social media. Would Channel Nine’s photo artist be fine with some backroom creep doing this to his girlfriend, sister, mother, wife, daughter?

The doctored image of Victorian MP Georgie Purcell.

The original image.

Channel Nine says automated Photoshop software was to blame for the stuff-up. If automated doctoring is genuinely to blame for what happened to Purcell’s photo, that should trouble us even more because dealing with an amorphous technology culprit may be much harder than marking down a real-life dope.

Adobe, the maker of the software, is having none of this. It tells The Australian that the big boobs and midriff change needed “human intervention and approval”.

I’d like to believe that Channel Nine’s statement is the whole truth. But it just has a ring of the-dog-ate-my-homework about it. If we believe the network, what comes next? Like Nostradamus, I can predict the ABC’s next line of defence for one of their “accidental” blasphemies against conservatives: automation, not one of us, was to blame for putting devil horns on Janet Albrechtsen’s photo.

I reckon we need to call stumps on how often technology gets blamed when in fact somewhere someone with a pulse and a blood group, if not a fully working brain, made a mistake. Though technology is meant to make us appear smarter, it can also make any one of us appear more of a blockhead.

The other reason I reckon a real-life person is involved is this: I’ve noticed that when Purcell is mentioned in the media, we’re invariably told that she is a former stripper. And apologies for repeating this but I do so for one purpose only. Why do we care? Why do we need to know?

Scott Morrison could be a former online dating ghostwriter for all I know. Malcolm Turnbull might have been a former professional mourner. Do I care? Not a bit. We didn’t tell you about their former jobs when we mentioned them because we were busy writing about how they performed their current ones. Enough said there.

But the moment someone did something remotely sexy in a previous life, then we hear about it all the time. If automation were an equal opportunity photofixer we’d be seeing Albo with better teeth and a trimmer waistline and those ears on Daniel Andrews might get a snip. But no, the automation miraculously kicks in to “iGenerate” bigger boobs and a sexy midriff.

No, I’m not buying Nine’s official line, even if I do feel its pain.

And even if technology did alter the original photo of Purcell, is it too much to expect some kind of human quality control? Just take a look at the finished product before it goes to air, is all I’m saying. Clearly no one did that, or if they did, then they really were up to no good by allowing the doctored one to feature on the 6pm news bulletin.

When we hand over control to technology, wiping our hands of human responsibility, then things are bound to go awry.

This week, Taylor Swift, who is due in Australia later this month, was on the receiving end of another level of technological abuse when explicit AI-generated images of her circulated on X, formerly known as Twitter. Managers at X acted quickly to shut down searches for Swift, pictured below, to avoid the global circulation of fake images of the singer. Even so, the fakes had already been viewed by millions of people. It’s good that X has a policy that strictly prohibits the posting of non-consensual nudity on its platform, but maybe policies aren’t enough; maybe we need to start punishing the publishers.

I have a long pedigree as a free market lover on the grounds that governments are proven boofheads when it comes to getting the balance right between protecting people and allowing people to flourish. If a politician or a bureaucrat can, they will choose a sledgehammer over a scalpel. Even so, if there aren’t already laws that exist to stop our images being doctored without our consent, and then being published, then we may need to start working on that. It’s one thing to add a shadow or a filter. But once you start playing around with someone’s breasts, then all bets are off.