San Francisco Blows AI Deepfake Pornography Seeking Shutdown of Websites Posting Non-consensual Explicit Material of Women and Girls

These 16 ‘undressing’ websites use AI to create deepfake porn material by graphically undressing girls and women. A disturbing yet concerning fact about these websites has been visited 200 million times in just the first 6 months this year. 

Yvonne Meré, The Chief Deputy Attorney of San Francisco filed a lawsuit against 16 porn websites that are allegedly publishing AI deepfake porn material of innocent women and girls without their consent. 

The lawsuit aims to completely shut down these websites and protect women and girls from becoming victims of non-consensual deepfake pornography.

Evidence shows that these websites have broken every law and regulation related to the use of AI technology and created non-consensual deepfakes to damage the reputation of innocent people through revenge pornography and worst of all child pornography.

David Chiu, the city attorney said that this lawsuit aims for two major things:

• Complete shutdown of such websites that create non-consensual AI deepfake porn material and spread it.
• Raise public awareness against AI-generated sexually explicit content.

One of the 16 sued websites had pop-ups appearing stating, “Have someone to undress?” or “Why waste time to take her out on a date?”. This compelled the visitors of such websites to use the deepfake-powered feature of the website, undressing already uploaded images of girls and women without their consent. Such offers were not for free but asked users to pay in cryptocurrency and credit card payments.

How Deepfake Technology Creates Pornography From Facial Images?

The most disturbing fact is that deepfake technology trained through AI Models is implemented on already uploaded porn material and then it uses real facial images of innocent girls and women to create a deepfake nude photo of them that looked highly realistic.

David Chiu raised a concern that victims may face challenges in taking appropriate legal actions against these websites as it is unclear about the source of the deepfake creator’s website. 

What can Users do to Ensure Safe Online Presence?

Most importantly, stop visiting porn websites and stop flooding your selfies online on every platform in the greed of becoming a social media celebrity deepfake. Remember, imposters and identity thieves are lurking who want to damage you and currently no strict actionable law is enforced that can regulate deepfake technology and shut down such websites.

Users can implement strong authentication methods and use encryption or passwords to protect their photos. 

Regulators and facial recognition service providers can create mass awareness about non-consensual deepfakes and alert users through offsite liveness testing and counter back with bashing every deepfake porn image or video by reporting it as a fake. Google and other search engines should act responsibly in this case. They should remove all deepfake content that promotes nudity from their search queries and databases.

Also Read: Elon Musk Becomes the Front Face in Deepfakes Scams