According to a recent report from Motherboard, adult entertainment website Pornhub has announced a sitewide ban on ‘deepfakes’ videos.
Deepfakes are videos of celebrities generated using a machine learning algorithm which superimposes a celebrity’s face on another video. Pornhub’s problem stems from the use of these faces for porn videos. The platform told Motherboard that it considers deepfakes to be nonconsensual and puts them in the same league as revenge porn.
“We do not tolerate any nonconsensual content on the site and we remove all said content as soon as we are made aware of it…Nonconsensual content directly violates our TOS [terms of service] and consists of content such as revenge porn, deepfakes or anything published without a person’s consent or permission,” a Pornhub spokesperson was quoted saying.
Previously, similar statements were made by Discord and Gfycat, who took a strong stance against content that “impersonates another person or falsely state or otherwise misinterpret your affiliation with a person.”
Even though Pornhub has announced a ban on deepfakes, the platform is full of fake celebrity porn videos which can be accessed simply by searching for “deepfakes”. Since the videos haven’t been removed as of writing this, it is expected that the platform is waiting for users to flag the inappropriate content before it’s removed.
The Verge notes that deepfake porn falls under vague legal territory, as it is a far more sophisticated version of pornographic photoshops and a “vastly more democratized” version of Hollywood’s digital recreation of actors. The content might also fall under copyright infringement or defamation, which is why it is essential to remove all such content from major platforms like Pornhub and Gfycat.
