Personalities from all walks of life, from politics to cinema, sports or music are in the hands of deepfake pornography creators. Advances in artificial intelligence now allow any face to appear on the body of a porn actor or a nude and make it appear as if that person is performing sexual acts, a technological progress as advanced as it is disturbing. And it doesn’t just happen to celebrities: anyone is vulnerable to this crime of digital violence known as revenge porn. Especially young people, the most accustomed to registering any vital experience through mobile phones.
AI-generated imagery has been around for a long time, but lately it has become disturbingly sophisticated. You don’t have to enter the dark web or be a computer expert to find deepfake porn, the latest bomb from the powerful adult industry that already has its new weapon ready to hook millions of people.
An NBC report discovered that two of the largest websites that host this content are easily accessible through Google and there their creators publish content with the faces of celebrities such as Scarlett Johansson, Ariana Grande or one of the most lucrative veins of this format: the streamers.
This is the case of the famous content creator on Twitch, QTCinderella, who upon discovering that her image was used to create deepfake porn, felt completely attacked: “It’s like feeling violated, that they take advantage of you,” she was honest in one of its massive live shows. “It shouldn’t be part of my job to have to pay money to have this removed. It should not be part of my job that they harass me, that they spread nude photos of me, â€she lamented emotionally.
Although deepfakes are practically entirely women -99% according to a Sensity report-, the truth is that it is less and less a problem that only affects celebrities, since the creators of this content announce that it can be achieved Custom made deepfake porn, with anyone you want and without your consent.
“A creator offered on Discord to make a five-minute deepfake of a non-famous girl, that is, anyone with less than 2 million followers on Instagram, for $65,” said one of the journalists who investigated the case for NBC. .
The creators of the sites use the online chat platform Discord to advertise their products, and people can pay with Visa and Mastercard. The business is so booming that “two popular deepfake creators are posting paid positions to help them create content.”
The obscurity of the world of deepfakes even led one of its consumers, the streamer Atrioc, to admit that he had bought and watched porn of this type of fellow profession, creators of content on Twitch as well-known as the very famous Pokimane. When caught in a live stream, he later expressed his remorse and offered a $60,000 receipt so that anyone affected who wanted to remove deepfakes would do so without spending his own money.
Paradoxically, the public denunciations, the regrets and the criticism of the deepfake have only increased the controversial business of using faces -mostly women- on the bodies of porn actresses to satisfy the fantasies of millions of consumers. They are multiplying every day.
The next step in the debate is focusing not on the moral, but on the legal: Should the use of artificial intelligence to create false images of a person having sex or being naked be prohibited? In the United States, some states have already passed laws in this regard, but deepfakes seem to be here to stay.
