Deepfake AI Outrageously Created 100K Nudes From Online Photos Of Women & Girls
Image via BigTunaOnline / Shutterstock.com
A deepfake research firm has found that photos of underage girls from social media are being faked to appear nude, no thanks to a bot.
According to a report by the company Sensity, the AI is able to “remove” clothes from photos, simulating over 100,000 sexual images of women and girls shared online between July 2019 and 2020. Sensity added that the majority of the victims were visibly underage.
The technology behind this bot is similar to a tool produced in 2019 called DeepNude. The AI service allowed people to upload a photo of a woman, and the AI would determine what that image would look like if her clothes were removed. It was immediately removed from the internet, but Sensity claimed this new bot is based on a similar version of the technology.
This new deepfake, which runs on Telegram, requires the user to upload an image of a girl. The bot then uses its neural network to determine what she would look like under the clothes, before producing a nude.
CEO of Sensity Giorgio Patrini said using photos of other individuals and “faking” them will put anyone with a social media account at risk.
The bot’s administrator, known as “P,” told the BBC that the service “does not harm anyone” and is purely for entertainment purposes. “No one will blackmail anyone with this, since the quality is unrealistic,” P said.
Sensity also found that the bot network has over 100,000 members, mostly based in Russia or Eastern Europe, and 70-percent of images uploaded were photos of friends or people they know.
“As soon as you share images or videos of yourself and maybe you’re not so conscious about the privacy of this content, who can see it, who can steal it, who can download it without you knowing, that actually opens the possibility of you being attacked,” Patrini told BuzzFeed News.
He added that such websites or apps “do not hide or operate underground because they are not strictly outlawed,” per the BBC.
The authors of the report also expressed concern that these bots could be used to extort women as deepfake technology improves. “It’s devastating, for victims of fake porn,” they shared. “It can completely upend their life because they feel violated and humiliated.”
Today we go public with the findings of a new investigation: early this year we uncovered a new deepfake bot on Telegram, an evolution of the infamous DeepNude from 2019, which "undressed" at least 100.000 women without their knowledge.https://t.co/JLhDtfo7jq pic.twitter.com/gjMIZ2CzV1
— Sensity (@sensityai) October 20, 2020
[via Technology Review, cover image via BigTunaOnline / Shutterstock.com]
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