Working for a group of divorce lawyers in Southern California, the private investigator primarily works in the digital realm, combining forensic skills with computer ones. One day, a retired actress comes in, whom he recognizes. He recalls how she was one of the greatest actresses of her generation before retiring early in her late twenties to start a family, though her husband has been dead for years now. In his office, she shows him an email she got, in which a malicious user threatens to upload deepfaked porn of her if she doesn’t send over a ransom. However, the P.I. doesn’t think that the threat is credible and considers it a phishing attempt. Still, the actress wants him to locate the malicious user.

The P.I. plans to let some time pass before telling her that the malicious user came from a foiled hacking farm in a foreign country. In the meantime, he watches some of her old films online and is reminded of why he finds her so charming, her subtle acting which somehow conveys so much emotion. He even fantasizes about being a hero while she plays the damsel in distress, though he quickly snaps out of it, knowing that she’s decades older than him and widowed.

After some time, the P.I. and the actress meet in a Starbucks. He gives her a file regarding a hacking farm in Helsinki that was busted, attempting to dispel her worries about the phishing email. However, the actress breaks down, saying that she doesn’t get it. With tears in her eyes, she explains to him the truth. She explains that she really loved acting but hated that she was subjected to the male gaze in the film industry, hence why she retired to start a family, as her husband would go on to show her real love. She says that she never regretted her decision, though she still wondered time and time again about what could’ve been, hence why she emailed the malicious user, asking him to deepfake her into a movie of her choice; she wanted to see herself in film again.

Two weeks later, the P.I. and the actress meet at her mansion. He opens his laptop for her in order to show her what he had created: deepfakes of her in various movies, created by some of his friends in the film industry. For two hours, the actress is amazed at what she’s seeing: her own face plastered across forty years of films, the years in which she retired. At the end, she weeps and tells him to destroy it, as she presumably has had enough. They exchange their goodbyes, and the P.I. leaves.