BBC Audio Rebel writer: the Indian author who questioned everything
This programme contains references to suicide.
Presenter: Asya Fouks
Producer: June Christie
Get in touch: outlook@bbc.com or WhatsApp +44 330 678 2707
(Photo: Banu Mushtaq, winner of the International Booker prize 2025. Credit:)
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BBC News
10 hours ago
- BBC News
Babydoll Archi: Indian woman's identity stolen for erotic AI content in deepfake deception
It took just a few days for Indian Instagram sensation Babydoll Archi to double her following to 1.4 million, thanks to a couple of viral social media was a video that showed her in a red sari, dancing seductively to Dame Un Grr – a Romanian song. And a photo posted on the platform showed her posing with American adult film star Kendra everyone wanted to know about her - and the name Babydoll Archi trended in Google search and spawned countless memes and fan pages. But there was one issue about to emerge – there was no real woman behind the online Instagram account was fake, although the face it used had uncanny likeness to a real woman - a homemaker in Dibrugarh city in Assam, whom we'll call truth unravelled after her brother lodged a police complaint. Pratim Bora, Sanchi's ex-boyfriend, was police officer Sizal Agarwal who's heading the investigation told the BBC that Sanchi and Bora had a falling out and the AI likeness he created was to exact "pure revenge" on - a mechanical engineer and a self-taught artificial intelligence (AI) enthusiast - used private photos of Sanchi to create a fake profile, Ms Agarwal is in custody and has not made any statements yet. The BBC has reached out to his family and will update the article when they Archi was created in 2020 and the first uploads were made in May 2021. The initial photos were her real pictures that had been morphed, Ms Agarwal said."As time passed, Bora used tools such as ChatGPT and Dzine to create an AI version. He then populated the handle with deepfake photos and videos."The account started picking up likes from last year but it started gaining traction from April this year, she short two-paragraph complaint to the police submitted by Sanchi's family on the night of 11 July came with printouts of some photos and videos as Agarwal says it did not name anyone because they had no idea who could be behind it. Babydoll Archi was not an unfamiliar name for the police. Ms Agarwal says they had also seen media reports and comments speculating that she was AI generated, but there had been no suggestion that it was based on a real they received the complaint, police wrote to Instagram asking for the details of the account's creator."Once we received information from Instagram, we asked Sanchi if she knew any Pratim Bora. Once she confirmed, we traced his address in the neighbouring district of Tinsukia. We arrested him on the evening of 12 July."Ms Agarwal says the police have "seized his laptop, mobile phones and hard drives and his bank documents since he had monetised the account"."The account had 3,000 subscriptions on linktree and we believe he had earned 1m rupees from it. We believe he made 300,000 rupees in just five days before his arrest," she added. Ms Agarwal says Sanchi is "extremely distraught - but now she and her family are receiving counselling and they are doing better".There really is no way to prevent something like this from happening, "but had we acted earlier, we could have prevented it from gaining so much traction", Ms Agarwal said."But Sanchi had no idea because she has no social media presence. Her family too had been blocked out from this account. They became aware only once it went viral," she has not responded to the BBC queries on the case, but it generally does not allow posting of nudity or sexual content. And last month, CBS reported that it removed a number of ads promoting AI tools used to create sexually explicit deepfakes using images of real people. The Instagram account of Babydoll Archi, which had 282 posts, is no longer available to public - although social media is replete with her photos and videos and one Instagram account seems to have all of them. The BBC has asked Meta what they are planning to do about Bal, AI expert and lawyer, says what happened to Sanchi "is horrible but almost impossible to prevent".She can go to the court and seek the right to be forgotten, and a court can order the press reports that named her to be taken down but it's hard to scrub all the trace from the happened to Sanchi, she says, is what's always been happening to women, where their photos and videos are circulated as revenge."It's now a lot easier to do because of AI, but such incidents are still not as common as we expect - or they could be under-reported because of stigma or people being targeted may not even know about it as in the present case," Ms Bal says. And people watching it had no incentive to report it to the social media platform or cybercrime portal, she their complaint against Mr Bora, police have invoked sections of law that deal with sexual harassment, distribution of obscene material, defamation, forgery to harm reputation, cheating by personification and cybercrime. If found guilty, Mr Bora could get up to 10 years in case which has also led to outrage on social media in recent days has seen some seeking tougher laws to deal with such Bal believes there are enough laws to take care of such cases, but whether there's scope for new laws to deal with generative AI companies has to be looked at."But we also have to remember that deepfakes are not necessarily bad and laws have to be carefully crafted because they can be weaponised to chill free speech."Follow BBC News India on Instagram, YouTube, X and Facebook
The Guardian
12 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘Look how well-read I am!' How ‘books by the metre' add the final touch to your home
People have always used books to assert their sophistication and affluence. You need only visit the library of a National Trust property to see that. The novelist F Scott Fitzgerald famously critiqued the shallowness of the super-rich via his character, Jay Gatsby, who lined his shelves with books in order to project a cultured image of himself – yet they were 'uncut' and had never been read. To one guest at Gatsby's party, that doesn't matter – he describes the shelves (that he had at first assumed to be cardboard facades of books) as 'a triumph. What thoroughness! What realism! Knew when to stop, too – didn't cut the pages. But what do you want? What do you expect?' A century on from The Great Gatsby's publication, it is once again fashionable to decorate using books – and to question the motives of those who do so. In Vincenzo Latronico's International Booker-shortlisted Perfection, a novel that highlights the hollowness of chasing a 'cool', 'curated' life, Anna and Tom's self-consciously chic flat features 'floor-to-ceiling shelves lined with paperbacks and graphic novels … interspersed with illustrated coffee-table books – monographs on Noorda and Warhol, Tufte's series on infographics, the Taschen history of typefaces, and another Taschen on the entryways of Milan,' carefully arranged with 'succulents in cement plant pots,' and 'a waist-level camera' in the place of bookends. Through their home, Latronico writes, the couple has created a picture of a life that is 'clear and purposeful' – whether or not that is actually the case. In an age of constant scrolling, there is social capital to be gained by simply looking as if you are a cultured person who listens to music on vinyl and reads lots of books. And creating an aesthetically pleasing bookshelf is now easier than ever, thanks to an increase in booksellers who trade in 'books by the metre'. Vintage volumes are particularly popular, as they offer an instant way to create the effect of a long-established library made up of books collected over many years. 'My bookshelf is now complete,' reads one customer review on an eBay listing for a metre's worth of 'randomly selected' antique titles, available for £50. Dayna Isom Johnson, a trend expert at Etsy, another website where some sellers offer books by the metre, says the company has 'seen a 19,616% increase in searches for book-lover decor' over the past three months, compared with the same time last year. If you're willing to pay a bit more, sellers will offer a more bespoke service: for example, for £98, the online shop Country House Library will sell you a metre of assorted vintage books that all have orange covers. Madeleine Ovenden is head of non-traditional sales at the publisher Thames & Hudson, which specialises in what might be referred to as 'coffee-table books'. She has seen an increase in interior designers wanting to bulk-buy books with spines in similar colours, 'to fit a room theme'. The company now sells bundles of coffee-table books that all fit a certain colour or aesthetic – a stack of lemon-yellow Thames & Hudson books, for instance, could be yours for £119.90. Customers will also come to the publisher directly, Ovenden says, with 'requests by the metre for certain shelf sizes'. The rise in such requests can be attributed to the popularity of the 'bookshelf wealth' interior design trend on TikTok – an extension of the 'quiet luxury' and 'stealth wealth' aesthetic. A bookshelf that looks like an heirloom family collection, complete with art and ornaments, suggests you care about literature and art – and have time and money to spend on these things. Philip Blackwell curates bookshelves for a living via his company, Ultimate Library, which is used by hotels, businesses and homeowners who want to outsource the task of filling up their bookshelves. Though he is critical of the 'books by the metre' trend – Ultimate Library's selling point is that a knowledgable team will work with the client to select books they might actually read – he acknowledges that, if you're trying to build a library from scratch, you will almost inevitably have a certain amount of space to fill. I'm speaking to Blackwell at 40 Leadenhall, a newly developed office building in the City of London, where his company was commissioned to create a library for workers to use. 'That panel there is 14 linear metres multiplied by 33.' So he and his colleagues have to find 462 metres of books to fill that space, though most will be chosen for more than just their age, size or colour, and will be available to borrow. 'Creating a book collection, certainly for a private client, is all about having a discussion, going on a voyage to discover it, and it should be really good fun,' Blackwell says. He likes to quote Cicero: 'A room without books is like a body without a soul.' Services like his, then, manufacture that 'soul' in places such as offices and hotels that might otherwise be pretty soulless. Blackwell's service might be less superficial than simply using books for wall-dressing, but its appeal is still partly down to clients liking the way that books look. Michael Wood, who works for M&G Real Estate, which owns 40 Leadenhall, says M&G approached Ultimate Library partly because 'we've got a big space in this ground floor to fill and books are a great way to do that'. Aesthetically, the books make the building's lobby look less stark – and the higher shelves, which feature older books arranged by colour, are wholly ornamental. 'As a decorative element, books are great because they add a lot of texture,' says New York-based interior designer Tommy Landen Huerter. 'They add colour in places where it wouldn't be easy to otherwise integrate it. They just make a home look a lot more lived-in.' There have 'definitely been clients I have bought books for that will probably never be opened', who want full bookshelves 'just for the aesthetic', he says. He has been asked, for example, to style books on high shelves that homeowners will 'never be able to reach'. That is partly because books look good, but also because of their value as status symbols, Landen Huerter thinks. 'It's like: 'Look how well-read I am because I have the time to read and I'm educated enough to know these topics.'' The designer himself has 'a weird insecurity' over the fact that visitors to his own home wouldn't know he reads, since he does so exclusively on an e-reader and therefore doesn't have any physical books on display. Through your home, 'you want to show your interests' he says – but you can also show what you would like people to think your interests are, which is the impulse behind clients asking him to buy books in bulk for ornamental purposes. 'I can understand why people would say: 'I haven't read 100 books in the last year, but I would like to have.'' Just as they do via social media or through clothing choices, people are often trying to present the version of themselves that they would like to be true, rather than what actually is. Presenting the image of being a book lover has never been easier – part of the reason that buying books by length has become a trend is that books can be bought very cheaply, says Matt Hubbard, owner of secondhand bookshop Halcyon Books in south-east London. In the UK and the US at least (the market is slightly less populated in continental Europe), books are published in huge quantities: 'We're definitely spoiled for having a hell of a lot of books around.' Hubbard says he could easily take on more books than he would be able to sell, and some 'tatty paperbacks' have such a low value that they end up getting recycled. There is a 'sort of a rag trade side of the book business', where books are bought by weight and sold on 'very cheaply' by retailers such as Amazon, eBay and World of Books. This has 'hugely depressed the prices' of a lot of secondhand books, he says. Selling books by the metre, then, is a savvy way for retailers to get rid of large numbers of titles that would otherwise be difficult to shift. It's not without its downsides, though. 'It promotes this overconsumption of things that don't really have meaning, that are just for the aesthetic,' says Landen Huerter. The interior designer worries about the rise of 'fast-fashion trends' in home decor, similar to what has happened in the clothing industry. When people start to feel they need to follow new trends and constantly change their homes, it creates 'a new level of waste and overconsumption', which 'gets away from the whole idea of having a collected and curated space of things that represent yourself, your story and your interests,' he says. Buying books by length allows people to create a kind of 'knock-off' version of a richly filled bookshelf put together over years of reading for people who 'can't be bothered to choose the books and read them,' Hubbard says – or who can't afford a service like Blackwell's, perhaps. It is easy to be snobby about people who fill their bookshelves in this way – but 'we've all got lots of books on our shelves that we haven't read,' Hubbard points out. In Japan, they even have a word – tsundoku – for acquiring books with the best of intentions but letting them pile up without reading them. Though it's obviously frustrating for true bibliophiles when someone has bought a random selection of books in bulk to decorate their home, the fact there are books in their home at all is a good thing, Blackwell thinks. Having books around means that, at the very least, the opportunity to read one is there. 'In my experience', he says, 'there is always the right time and the right place to read a book.' Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
Daily Mail
20 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Priyanka Chopra, 43, shocks fans by slipping into a bikini to STRADDLE husband Nick Jonas, 32
Priyanka Chopra slipped into a sexy red string bikini this week as she celebrated her 43rd birthday in the Bahamas. The Quantico actress was with her husband of seven years, 32-year-old pop singer Nick Jonas. After striking several supermodel poses on the shore, the beauty from India was seen straddling her spouse in a quick video. Fans thought the move was very 'frisky.' Several remarked in the comments section that Chopra had gone 'over the top' and seemed to be 'super in love.' Another wrote: 'Wowie looks too epic.' There was also this hilarious note: 'Now that's a love island I would watch!' This remark was on target: 'Priyanka be like - he is all mine.' Also on the trip was their daughter Malti Jonas, aged three. The brunette captioned her post: 'Dream❤️ bye bye to the best birthday trip. Summer vacation ever! Sound on.' And Chopra also tagged her photographer friend Akari Kalai. She was enjoying the well-deserved break after a busy few months promoting her recent action-comedy Heads Of State. Last month she joined her costars John Cena and Idris Elba at the US premiere, which was held in Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City. John stars in the Amazon Prime Video film as a blockbuster action star who later becomes the President of the United States. Idris plays a former commando who rises to become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, but despite his country's longstanding 'special relationship' with the US, the two world leaders have an ongoing rivalry. Their differences don't last long though when both become the targets of a global conspiracy, and Priyanka joins the fray as an MI6 agent who is ordered to keep the two leaders out of harm's way. Filming began in 2023 in London before moving to Liverpool, France and then on to Serbia. Paddy Considine, Stephen Root, Carla Gugino, Jack Quaid, Sarah Niles and Richard Coyle also star. The film was produced by Safran Company's Peter Safran and John Rickard. Elba and Cena are both also executive producers, along with Marcus Viscidi. The script was written by Josh Appelbaum and André Nemec, from draft by Harrison Query. Chopra was the winner of the Miss World 2000 pageant before becoming an actress. She received India's top accolades, including two National Film Awards and five Filmfare Awards. Her acting debut came in the Tamil film Thamizhan (2002), followed by her first Bollywood feature in The Hero: Love Story of a Spy (2003). She played the leading lady in the box-office hits Andaaz (2003) and Mujhse Shaadi Karogi (2004) and had her breakout role in the 2004 romantic thriller Aitraaz. Chopra established herself with starring roles in the top-grossing productions Krrish and Don (both 2006), and later reprised her role in their sequels. The star was also in the films Kaminey (2009), 7 Khoon Maaf (2011), Barfi! (2012), Mary Kom (2014), Dil Dhadakne Do (2015), and Bajirao Mastani (2015). From 2015 to 2018, Chopra starred as Alex Parrish in the ABC thriller series Quantico. Chopra has also appeared in Hollywood films, such as Baywatch (2017), Isn't It Romantic (2019), The White Tiger (2021), and The Matrix Resurrections (2021), and starred in the action thriller series Citadel (2023–present).
