HUNDREDS OF EXPLICIT deepfake videos featuring female celebrities, actresses, and musicians are being uploaded to the world’s biggest pornography websites every month, new analysis shows. The nonconsensual videos rack up millions of views, and porn companies are still failing to remove them from their websites.
As they became increasingly common in 2020, figures from deep-fake detection company Sensity show up to 1,000 deep-fake videos have been uploaded to porn sites every month. The videos continue to break away and into the mainstream from devoted deep-fake pornography groups.
Millions of times have watched deep fake videos hosted on three of the biggest porn websites, XVideos, Xnxx, and xHamster. The videos are surrounded by commercials, helping the sites make money. XVideos and Xnxx, both owned by the same Czech holding company, are the world’s number one and three largest websites for porn, and rank in the top 10 largest websites on the entire internet. They each have as many visitors as Wikipedia, Amazon, and Reddit, or they surpass them.
More than 23 million views of one 30-second video, which appears on all three of the above websites and uses the face of actress Emma Watson, were watched 13 million times on Xnxx. Other in-depth videos with hundreds of thousands or millions of views include celebrities including Natalie Portman, Billie Eilish, Taylor Swift, and Anushka Shetty, an Indian actress. Since they first appeared in 2018, several of the stars have been the targets of deepfakes on an ongoing basis.
Giorgio Patrini, CEO and chief scientist at Sensity, which was until recently called DeepTrace, says, “The attitude of these websites is that they don’t really consider this a problem.” Videos of deep-faced pornography are widely considered to target, harm, and humiliate the women who are at their center. Sensity has increasingly seen deep fakes being made for other people in the public realm, such as influencers of Instagram, Twitch and YouTube, Patrini adds, and he worries about the advancement of deep fake tech.
“Until [porn websites] have a strong reason to try to take them down and filter them, I strongly believe nothing is going to happen,” says Patrini. “People will always be able to upload this sort of content to these websites that are viewed by hundreds of millions of people without any repercussions.”
Some of the videos are hidden in plain sight and, after all, are posted to be viewed. In their names, some videos have “fake” or “deepfake” and are tagged as deepfake. For example, on XVideos and Xnxx, tag pages list hundreds of videos.
The full scale of the issue is, however, unknown on porn websites. There is definitely never going to be a true image of how many of these videos are made without the permission of people.
Despite repeated attempts to reach XVideos and Xnxx members, the owners did not respond to requests for feedback on their deep-faked attitudes and policies.
Alex Hawkins, VP of xHamster, says the company does not have a particular deepfakes policy, but treats them “like any other non-consensual content.” Hawkins says the moderation process of the company includes several different measures, and if people’s photos are used without permission, it will delete videos.
We completely understand the problem of deepfakes, so we make it easy for it to be eliminated, “Hawkins says.” “Content posted without obtaining the requisite permission is in violation of our Terms of Use and will be deleted until detected.” Hawkins adds that WIRED has passed on to its moderation team to investigate the hundreds of videos appearing as deepfakes on xHamster, which were highlighted by WIRED.
Pornhub, which is the second largest porn website, did not include deep fake upload figures seen by WIRED and still has issues with the videos despite banning deep fakes in 2018.
“When women are offended and humiliated and demeaned in this way on the internet, there has to be some kind of thought about what we do about it, and it really is like a question about privacy and security,” says Nina Schick, a political broadcaster and author of Deepfakes and the Infocalypse.
The underlying artificial intelligence software needed to render them has progressed since the first deepfakes emerged from Reddit in early 2018. Creating deep-faced videos is becoming cheaper and simpler for users. A security researcher using open-source software and investing less than $100 was able to build Tom Hanks’ video and audio in a recent example.
The advances in technology have raised concerns that deep-fakes could be used to influence political discussions. The danger has largely failed to materialize, although there have been some early examples of this occurring. Deepfake porn, however, has flourished, where the technology was first created. The Hollywood actress Kristen Bell said she was “shocked” when she first learned that her image was used to make deep fakes. ” Even if it’s labeled, ‘Oh, this isn’t really her,’ it’s difficult to think about it. I’m being exploited,’ she said in June to Vox.
The number of deepfakes is increasing exponentially online. In July 2019, a report released last year by Sensity found 14,678 deep-fake online videos, 96 percent of which were porn and almost all focused on women. By June this year the number of deepfakes had climbed to 49,081.
The majority of deep-faced porn is found in particular communities and is created by them. Sensity ‘s 2019 review reveals that the top four deep-fake porn websites received more than 134 million views last year. An in-depth porn website is full of celebrity videos and features videos of Indian actresses that have been viewed millions of times. Some videos state that they were requested, while their creators say that in bitcoin they can be paid for.
“Some of this technology is developing very quickly, because, sadly, from the creators’ side, there is very much passion and drive,” Patrini says. “I think we’re going to see it implemented very soon with a much greater intention for private individuals.” He believes that there will be a “tipping point” when lawmakers will become aware of the problems when the technology is simple for anyone to use.
Clare McGlynn, a professor at the Durham Law School who specializes in pornography regulations and sexual abuse images, agrees. What this illustrates is the looming issue for non-celebrities that is going to come, “she says.” “This is a major problem for celebrities and those in the public eye. But my long-standing worry is the danger of what’s coming down the road, talking to survivors who are not celebrities.
The legal remedies for individuals appearing in deep-faced videos have not kept up with the technology at the moment. It was never, in fact, prepared for the impact of porn created by AI. “If a pornographic image or video of you goes up online, the legal options for taking it down differ wildly, ” says Aislinn O’Connell, a law lecturer from Royal Holloway University in London.
People can pursue nonconsensual uploads for defamation, under human rights laws, copyright complaints, and other forms. However, most of these processes are onerous, resource-intensive and most often don’t apply to deepfakes. ‘Now we need more and better options,’ says O’Connell.
In US states, several deep-fake laws have been passed, but these concentrate mainly on politics and neglect the effect that deep-fake laws already have on the lives of people. The Law Commission is conducting an online review of the sharing of intimate images in the UK, which includes deep fakes, but it is anticipated that it will take years for any changes to be made. O’Connell recommends that England introduce legislation on picture protection so that individuals can defend themselves correctly.
Nevertheless, although policymakers fail to fix the problem, the technology is expected to become cheaper and easier to use for all. In the pornographic room, I see the evolution of deepfakes as actually the harbinger of the bigger issues of civil liberties that are going to arise, “Schick says.”
“This technology is out there, and it is developing at a pace that is much easier to keep up with than society can,” she says. “We are not ready for the age of synthetic technology, where even video becomes something that almost everyone can corrupt.” In order to counteract this, Schick says, technologists, the public, domain-specific experts, policy officials, and policymakers need to be interested in many individuals. However, right now, that’s not happening.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK.
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