- Lawsuit Against Websites for Creating Deepfake Images
- Scale of Website Activities
- Creation of Deepfake Images of Celebrities and Minors
The city of San Francisco has made a major announcement by filing a lawsuit against 16 websites that create and distribute AI-generated nudes of real adults and even minors.
Lawsuit Against Websites for Creating Deepfake Images
According to San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu, these websites were spreading nonconsensual deepfake nudes of real adults and minors. The website owners and operators violate state and federal laws prohibiting deepfake pornography, revenge pornography, and child pornography.
Scale of Website Activities
According to a NY Times report, the people and companies behind these websites are based out of California, New Mexico, the United Kingdom and Estonia. Chiu stated that these 16 websites had a combined 200 million times visits in the first half of this year. Few of these websites even allowed free creation of nude images before they charged for more images. Some of them were even willing to accept crypto and credit cards. According to the city’s state attorney, the website’s AI models were trained with real pornography and child abuse images to create AI-generated deepfakes.
Creation of Deepfake Images of Celebrities and Minors
The website’s AI models were trained to produce realistic images of private body parts in just seconds. The models even created real-looking nude images of celebrities like Taylor Swift and middle-school girls. In some cases, these images were used to humiliate, harass, and extort money from the victims. One of the victim’s mothers, Sara Eisenberg, stated, “*You can be as internet-savvy and social media-savvy as you want, and you can teach your kids all the ways to protect themselves online, but none of that can protect them from somebody using these sites to do really awful, harmful things.*”
Chiu also mentioned that it is quite impossible to trace the origin of the images once they start circulating around. The lawsuit seeks to close down these websites and permanently block them from creating AI-generated nudes in the future. While AI has its positive sides in different aspects globally, Chiu mentioned that the issue of deepfake pornography is one of its dark sides.
