When Motherboard first alerted the world to the controversial “deepfakes” subreddit, it seemed like a Black Mirror storyline playing out in real life (and not just in a ‘my toaster has Wi-Fi’ kind of way).
Users of the message board had managed to seamlessly place famous faces onto other peoples’ bodies. This resulted in hundreds of uncannily realistic celebrity porn videos, and a few Nicolas Cage memes for good measure. One piece of software is used by all users, and has been downloaded more than 100,000 times since last month.
Which is all deeply unethical, but the legality of the practice is much fuzzier. Pornographic photoshops of A-listers have existed on the internet for decades, but not to such a sophisticated and potentially damaging standard. Actors can perhaps attempt to take down the videos through defamation or copyright infringement laws, but according to The Verge their best bet is going after the sites that host the videos.
Discord and Gfycat, two platforms that users first uploaded their creations to, have banned the practice, and now Pornhub, the biggest X-rated site in the world, will follow suit.
The company told Motherboard that ‘deepfakes’ contravenes its rules against nonconsensual porn, saying: “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,”
Critics of ‘deepfakes’ believe the sophisticated and accessible nature of the AI technology will have grave consequences, resulting in instances of revenge porn and political spoofs that could spark a fake news crisis.
