Over the past few months, AI-generated celebrity porn or Deepfakes have become a hot topic of discussion and the latest controversy to hit artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Deepfakes essentially use artificial intelligence to morph celebrity faces on porn or regular videos in a very realistic manner. Since their rise in popularity, Deepfakes have rightly received opposition from celebrities, social media sites and internet experts. After being banned by Pornhub, Twitter, and Discord, the practice of trading AI-generated celebrity porn has also been removed from Reddit.
On Wednesday, the social media giant blocked subreddits including r/deepfakes and r/deepfakeNSFW which were used to circulate AI-generated celebrity porn videos. It’s not yet clear whether other subreddits which may have used such videos will come under the scanner, or whether offending posts in those subreddits would be removed.
Reddit’s updated policy on the matter states,
“Reddit prohibits the dissemination of images or video depicting any person in a state of nudity or engaged in any act of sexual conduct apparently created or posted without their permission, including depictions that have been faked.
Images or video of intimate parts of a person’s body, even if the person is clothed or in public, are also not allowed if apparently created or posted without their permission and contextualized in a salacious manner (e.g., “creepshots” or “upskirt” imagery). Additionally, do not post images or video of another person for the specific purpose of faking explicit content or soliciting “lookalike” pornography.”
Before the ban, the subreddit r/deepfakes had more than 92,000 followers which shows how popular the concept of AI-generated fake celebrity porn is. The subreddit housed fake porn of videos of many celebrities including Taylor Swift, Selena Gomez, and Olivia Wilde.
It’s really frightening to see how easy it is to create fake celebrity porn videos using artificial intelligence. The concept is no longer rocket science or involves deep knowledge of video editing or artificial intelligence. There are apps out there which can carry out the face swapping just with a click of the button. It’s good to see that social media websites and even porn websites are taking steps to ban this nonconsensual content.
