Washington DC: With photo apps digitally undressing women, turning sexual text into images to create “AI girls,” and manipulating images to fuel “sextortion” rackets, the boom in deepfake porn outstrips efforts to regulate technology in the United States and Europe.
Artificial intelligence-powered deepfakes, usually associated with fake viral images of celebrities such as Pope Francis in a blowfish coat and an arrested Donald Trump, are widely used to generate non-consensual pornography that can disrupt normal lives, experts say.
Women are a particular target of free, widely available AI tools and apps that require no technical expertise, allowing users to digitally strip clothing from photos or insert faces into explicit sexual videos.
“With the rise of AI-generated porn and deepfake porn, the use of women’s images and likenesses without their consent has become the norm,” Sophie Maddox, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania who tracks image-based sexual abuse, told AFP.
“What message do we send about consent as a society when virtually any woman can be naked?”
An American Twitch streamer named QTCinderella lamented the “constant exploitation and objectification” of women victims of deepfake porn in a tearful video. She added that she was being harassed by people sending her deepfake copies of her.
The scandal broke out in January during a livestream by fellow streamer Brandon Ewing. Ewing was caught viewing a website containing deepfake sexual images of multiple women, including QTC Cinderella.
“This is more than just being compromised. It’s so much more than that,” she wrote on Twitter, adding that the experience “ruined” her.
“Hyper Real”
The prevalence of online deepfakes highlights the threat of AI-powered disinformation that can damage reputations and lead to bullying and harassment.
While celebrities such as singer Taylor Swift and actress Emma Watson are victims of deepfake porn, private women are also being targeted.
The American and European media, from academics to activists, are flooded with first-hand testimonies of women shocked to discover their faces in deepfake porn.
According to a 2019 study by Dutch AI company Sensity, about 96% of online deepfake videos are non-consensual pornography, most of which depict women.
“The private act of sexual fantasies that used to take place in someone’s mind is now being transferred to real-world technology and content creators,” Roberta Duffield, director of intelligence at Blackbird.AI, told AFP.
“The ease of access and lack of oversight, in parallel with the increasing professionalization of the industry, has allowed these technologies to take root in new forms of exploiting and diminishing women.”
Among the new text-to-art generators is “Hyperreal AI Girl,” a free app that creates avatars from real-life photos and lets you customize them with prompts like “brown skin” and “thigh straps.”
New technologies such as Stable Diffusion, an open-source AI model developed by Stability AI, make it possible to evoke realistic images from textual descriptions.
“Dark Corner”
Advances in technology have created what Duffield calls a “growing cottage industry” around AI-enhanced porn, with many deepfake creators taking paid requests to generate content featuring people of their customers’ choosing.
Last month, the FBI warned of “sextortion schemes,” in which scammers capture photos and videos from social media to create “sexually themed” deepfakes and use them to extort money.
The FBI added that victims included minor children and adults without consent.
The proliferation of AI tools goes beyond regulation.
“This is not the dark corner of the internet where these images are created and shared,” Dan Purcell, founder and chief executive of AI brand protection firm Ceartas, told AFP.
“It’s right in front of us. And yes, the law needs to catch up.”
In the UK, the government has proposed a new online safety bill to criminalize the sharing of porn deepfakes.
Four US states, including California and Virginia, have outlawed the distribution of deepfake porn, but victims often have little legal recourse if perpetrators live outside those jurisdictions.
In May, US lawmakers introduced the Anti-Intimate Image Deepfake Prevention Act, which would criminalize the sharing of deepfake porn without consent.
Popular online spaces such as Reddit are also trying to regulate the burgeoning AI porn community.
“The internet is a jurisdiction without borders, and we need uniform international law to protect people from these forms of exploitation,” Purcell said.
