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Friday, February 2nd, 2024

Deepfake Porn Is Out of Control

Author:     Matt Burgess
Source:     Wired
Publication Date:     OCT 16, 2023 | 7:00 AM
 Link: Deepfake Porn Is Out of Control
Stephan:  

About a week ago I got an email from a reader who had a friend whose daughter had someone create and post to social media a series of fake porn images of the girl, in which her face had been transferred onto the body of a woman whose body shape and hair color were similar. She said her friend thought it was done by a boy in the girl’s school when she turned him down for a date, but no one could prove it, and he denied it. The woman asked me to do something about this trend. Then I read about some MAGAt doing the same thing to Taylor Swift.  I have done several hours of research now on this trend, and am appalled at how large an issue this is. Particularly, when considered with another crisis trend, children not even going to school, just staying home or with a friend and spending their days on social media.

Illustration by James Marshall / Getty

Google’s and Microsoft’s search engines have a problem with deepfake porn videos. Since deepfakes emerged half a decade ago, the technology has consistently been used to abuse and harass women—using machine learning to morph someone’s head into pornography without their permission. Now the number of nonconsensual deepfake porn videos is growing at an exponential rate, fueled by the advancement of AI technologies and an expanding deepfake ecosystem.

A new analysis of nonconsensual deepfake porn videos, conducted by an independent researcher and shared with WIRED, shows how pervasive the videos have become. At least 244,625 videos have been uploaded to the top 35 websites set up either exclusively or partially to host deepfake porn videos in the past seven years, according to the researcher, who requested anonymity to avoid being targeted online.

Over the first nine months of this year, 113,000 videos were uploaded to the websites—a 54 percent increase on the 73,000 videos uploaded in all of 2022. By the end of this year, the analysis forecasts, more videos will have been produced in 2023 […]

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