While the NBC News investigation did not specifically name Karen Gillan among the celebrities whose images appear in the videos sold through Fan-Topia, the Scottish actress—best known for her roles as Amy Pond in Doctor Who , Nebula in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and Ruby Roundhouse in the Jumanji franchise—occupies a representative place among the countless public figures whose likenesses have been weaponized by deepfake technology.
This design is deliberately obfuscatory. Deepfake creators are not searchable on Fan-Topia, and their profile links change constantly. Searches on Google or other mainstream search engines do not surface this content. The “hidemylink” service allows subscribers to return to creators’ pages they previously subscribed to, including those that existed before April 2023, creating a persistent and difficult-to-disrupt marketplace for abusive content.
The proliferation of non-consensual deepfakes raises severe ethical concerns that extend far beyond copyright infringement.
Some celebrity victims have taken proactive measures. Several A-list names are reportedly hiring dedicated teams to track and report unauthorized AI replicas of themselves across social media. This represents a new kind of digital self-defense—an acknowledgment that in the age of AI, reputation management must extend to the policing of one’s own likeness in spaces one never consented to inhabit.
Few actors embody the convergence of these themes more fully than . The Scottish actress, best known for playing Nebula in the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise and appearing in Jumanji: The Next Level , has also directed her own debut film, The Party’s Over , and maintains a passionate fan following that celebrates her at conventions worldwide.
Gillan’s career is currently at a fascinating inflection point. She is set to star in the satirical sci‑fi thriller Dual , playing two roles—a woman who receives a terminal diagnosis and opts for a cloning procedure, then finds herself battling her own clone in a court‑mandated duel to the death. The film, which also stars Aaron Paul and Jesse Eisenberg, will see Gillan literally “teaming up with herself”—a premise that resonates eerily with the deepfake phenomenon, where digital copies of celebrities are created without their consent.
The internet has always been a vast repository for fandom, creative expression, and subcultural convergence. However, as generative artificial intelligence evolves from a novelty into an accessible, everyday utility, the boundary between benign fan appreciation and invasive digital manipulation has blurred. The cryptic digital trail left by keywords like "Fan-Topia," "Mondomonger," and highly specific search strings involving popular actresses—such as Scottish star Karen Gillan—points to a sprawling subterranean ecosystem of online media curation, algorithmic archival indexing, and the complex ethical minefields surrounding deepfake technology.
Congress has also reintroduced the , which would create a private right of action addressing the rise of unauthorized deepfakes and digital replicas misusing voice and likeness without consent. At the state level, California’s proposed Digital Dignity Act would require large online platforms to remove digital replicas upon receiving a court order and make reasonable efforts to identify and remove identical copies.
The through line is authenticity. In an era when any face can be digitally grafted onto any body, when any voice can be synthesized to say any words, the very concept of “real” becomes contested. Fan conventions, with their handshake lines and signed photographs, are shrines to the authentic. The celebrities who attend them are offering something that cannot be deepfaked: their actual, physical, consenting presence.
This gap between policy and enforcement represents a critical failure in the infrastructure that enables deepfake exploitation to thrive. By continuing to process payments for these transactions—even after public statements claiming they would not—credit card companies provide the financial oxygen that keeps platforms like Fan-Topia viable. The companies are aware of the issue but have struggled to effectively police transactions across the sprawling, often hidden corners of the internet where this content resides.
File names distributed across peer-to-peer networks and digital communities follow strict naming conventions to help users filter content. Breaking down this specific string reveals how these networks operate: