Did it go too far? Artificial intelligence can generate very realistic porn images

Deepfake porn is not a new technology

It is a synthetic pornography technology that is created by modifying already existing pornographic material by applying deepfake technology to actors’ faces.

The technology has sparked controversy because it involves making and sharing real videos of people, even celebrities, without consent.

For some men it is used for revenge, for others more shy to satisfy sexual desire on a personal and intimate level.

In June 2019, an application called DeepNudecapable of removing clothing from images of real fashion models.

On June 27, the creators removed the app, although various free and paid copies of the app continue to exist, such as DeepNude.gg, where users can undress women either for free (but resulting in blurry images) or for a fee (resulting in explicit images, but with small visual errors).

As of 2022 there are numerous online AI programs that can generate erotic images of real people, but without their consent

Between 2022 and 2023, numerous programs appeared, inspired by DALL-E and Midjourney, but which can generate fake images with pornographic content with realistic graphics and characters in erotic poses.

These programs include Pornpen.AI which can be used for free, but also for a fee for users who want to generate images faster and edit costumes and accessories of porn characters.

In this program, users don’t write commands, they just have to choose keywords/tags regarding skin color, gender, ethnicity, eye color, weight, height, breast size, size of genital organs, hairstyle, option regarding the presence or excess of pubic hair, costumes, background, etc.

Sociobits claims that there are still six more programs with advanced artificial intelligence – PornJourney, Deepswap.ai, DeepNude.gg, Reface Porn, myraah.io, OnlyFake etc.

9News and AP News are warning that artificial intelligence has gone too far, and a woman has been the victim of fake erotic photos of her.

Fake and non-consensual pornography, even if it is used for personal, intimate purposes, without giving it to the public, primarily harms women professionally and socially.

“The reality is that technology will continue to proliferate, continue to develop, and continue to become as easy as the push of a button,” said Adam Dodge, founder of EndTAB, a group that offers classes on technology-induced sexual abuse.

“And as long as that happens, people will undoubtedly continue to abuse this technology to harm others, primarily through online sexual violence, fake pornography and fake nude images.”

Following the generation process, the resulting images are marked by the AI ​​with the signs or logo of the company/program used, which attests to their fake character, and further it is the responsibility of the user to remove them.

In Romania there are already laws that can punish users with 2 years in prison for images published for defamatory purposes and if they do not specify that the images are generated by virtual programs.

“You Can’t Win”

Noelle Martin, from Perth, Australia, experienced the horror of being a victim of this technology.

The 28-year-old found fake porn images of herself 10 years ago when, out of curiosity, one day she used Google to search for an image of herself.

To this day, Martin says she doesn’t know who created the fake images or videos of her having sex that she later found.

She suspects that someone may have taken a photo posted on her social media page or elsewhere and turned her into a porn starlet unintentionally.

Terrified, Martin contacted various websites over several years in an effort to have the images removed. “You can’t win”Martin said.

“These images will always be there. It’s like they’ve ruined you forever.”

The more she talked, she said, the more the problem escalated.

The platforms try to limit the function, but there are many independent sites that cannot be controlled

Meanwhile, some AI programs already limit access to explicit image generation.

OpenAI, the company that created ChatGPT and DALL-E, claims to have removed explicit content from the data used to train the image generation system DALL-Ewhich limits users’ ability to create erotic images.

The company also filters requests and claims to block users who try to generate erotic images of celebrities and politicians.

Midjourney, another AI program that generates images, blocks the use of certain keywords, and encourages users to report images that violate the community and program rules hosted on Discord to the moderators.

But there are still many free and paid sites that can generate erotic images without consent, and currently, the authorities cannot control them. They can only be closed if they contain child pornography.

Victims of this type of abuse can only request that the images be removed using copyright laws – Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in the United States, respectively European Copyright Directive (EUCD) in the European Union or they can sue the respective sites to claim damages for moral damages and defamation.