Vicky Pattison’s deepfake sex tape, The Weeknd, Hard Truths, The Fall of Diddy, and The Apprentice: This week’s big releases

This week, reality star Vicky Pattison is warning viewers about the dangers of deepfake sex tapes in a new documentary – by releasing her own video online.

But that’s not all the week has in store.

A new album from The Weeknd is coming out, Hard Truths, starring Marianne Jean-Baptiste, hits the big screen, The Apprentice returns and there’s yet another documentary coming on the allegations around Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs.

Read on for this week’s biggest releases…

Deepfake porn – which usually combines a real person’s face with a fake, sexually explicit body – is becoming increasingly prevalent.

On Tuesday, a new Channel 4 documentary, Vicky Pattison: My Deepfake Sex Tape, aims to explore the issue and its effect on women and girls.

In it, the 37-year-old former Geordie Shore star creates her own deepfake porn video and releases it on social media.

The video appears to show Vicky engaging in a sex act with a man, first in a bra, and then topless.

She acknowledges to BBC News that releasing her own video might seem “counterintuitive”, but says she’s trying to highlight the urgency of the issue.

Pattison says it took a long time to work up the nerve to hit “post” on X, because she knew it would be “the point of no return”.

“What struck me most was how helpless I felt once it was released – it gave me a glimpse into the powerlessness victims experience,” she says.

“By putting myself in this position, even in a controlled and consensual way, I wanted to bring home just how vulnerable all of us are”.

Whenever I think of The Weeknd, I always think about Blinding Lights – a song forever etched into my mind by TikTok dances and the dark days of the pandemic.

But his new album, Hurry Up Tomorrow, which is coming out on Friday, could be the last music he releases under his longtime alter ego.

Last year, he told W Magazine he wanted to “kill The Weeknd”, but would still make music.

Shortly afterwards, he reverted to his birth name Abel Tesfaye on his social media accounts.

So what will the final chapter of music by The Weeknd sound like? There’s a lot to look forward to – including guest appearances from rapper Playboi Carti and Brazilian singer Anitta.

By Steven McIntosh, entertainment reporter

Most people find January depressing. For me, it’s the best month of the year.

The film awards season is well under way by this point, which means cinemas are populated by higher-quality films than the popcorn blockbusters that dominate the summer.

One of the British contenders this year is Hard Truths, starring actress Marianne Jean-Baptiste.

It focuses on Pansy, an irritable woman who is constantly starting fights with everyone around her. Her perpetual misery can be funny to watch, but her bad mood is clearly taking a toll on her family. The word depression isn’t mentioned explicitly, but it’s clear Pansy is struggling.

At a screening in October, I was struck by the impact Hard Truths had on the audience. Its relatively short 95-minute runtime disguises a film with significant depth and which punches well above its weight.

Speaking to BBC News in December, Jean-Baptiste reflected: “Pansy comes from a generation where you’re taught to just get on with things. It’s like the pre-Oprah generation, self-help – it’s before all that. You just went, ‘I feel rubbish, but I’ve got to do the laundry.’ You get up and you get on with it.”

It didn’t take long for the documentaries on Sean “Diddy” Combs to start rolling in.

The latest, The Fall of Diddy, comes out in the UK and Ireland on discovery+ on Tuesday.

The four-part series promises to “pull back the curtain” on the music mogul and features more than 30 interviews, including with those who accuse him of abuse.

Mr Combs was arrested and charged with sex trafficking and racketeering last year.

He has also received multiple lawsuits from several men and women.

Mr Combs has pleaded not guilty to all the accusations. His legal team has repeatedly asserted his innocence.

A pizza company owner and a hair transplant consultant walk into a boardroom…

Not the start of a bad joke, but something you can actually expect to see at the start of BBC One’s The Apprentice, which returns on Thursday.

There are 18 new candidates battling it out for the chance to win business tycoon Lord Sugar’s £250,000 investment and mentorship.

Get set for weeks of tasks, firings and cringe-inducing moments.

In previous series, the two teams have been split by gender for the early tasks. But this year, the teams will be mixed gender from the beginning.

The change was not prompted by the casting of a non-binary contestant. Instead, the BBC says it simply wants to freshen up the format.

But this format tweak does pre-emptively solve a potential casting issue for producers in future years.