In November 2017, a Reddit account called deepfakes posted
pornographic clips made with software that pasted the faces of Hollywood
actresses over those of the real performers. Nearly two years later, deepfake is
a generic noun for video manipulated or fabricated with artificial intelligence
software. The technique has drawn laughs on YouTube, along with concern from
lawmakers fearful of political disinformation. Yet a new report that
tracked the deepfakes circulating online finds they mostly remain true to their
salacious roots.
Startup Deeptrace took a kind of deepfake census during
June and July to inform its work on detection tools it hopes to sell to news
organizations and online platforms. It found almost 15,000 videos openly
presented as deepfakes—nearly twice as many as seven months earlier. Some 96
percent of the deepfakes circulating in the wild were pornographic, Deeptrace
says.
The count is unlikely to be exhaustive, but the findings
are a reminder that despite speculation about deepfakes destabilizing elections,
the technology is mostly being used very differently, including as a tool for harassment. One
worrying trend: Deeptrace says the tools needed to create deepfakes are
becoming more sophisticated and more widely available.
The startup's report describes a niche but thriving
ecosystem of websites and forums where people share, discuss, and collaborate
on pornographic deepfakes. Some are commercial ventures that run advertising
around deepfake videos made by taking a pornographic clip and editing in a
person's face without that individual's consent.
All the people edited into the pornographic clips
Deeptrace found were women. Clips of the most popular figures—Western actresses
and South Korean pop celebrities—had millions of views. Nonprofits have already
reported that women journalists and political activists are being attacked or
smeared with deepfakes. Henry Ajder, a researcher at Deeptrace who worked on
the firm's report, says there are deepfake forums where users discuss or
request pornographic deepfakes of women they know, such as ex-girlfriends,
wanting to see them edited into a pornographic clip.
Danielle
Citron, a law professor at Boston University, describes pornographic deepfakes
made without a person’s consent as an “invasion of sexual privacy.” She spoke
at a June hearing by the US House Intelligence Committee about artificial
intelligence media manipulation tools.
The porn industry has helped pioneer new media technologies,
from VHS and pop-up ads to streaming video. Citron says that the preponderance
of pornographic deepfakes is a reminder of another consistent lesson from the
history of technology: “At each stage we’ve seen that people use what’s ready
and at hand to torment women. Deepfakes are an illustration of that.”
Citron helped spur the recent spread of state legislation
on revenge porn, which is now subject to laws in at least 46 states and the
District of Columbia. California is among them; last week its governor, Gavin
Newsom, signed into law a bill that allows a person edited into sexually
explicit material without consent to seek civil damages against the person who
created or disclosed it.
The law professor also says she is currently talking with
House and Senate lawmakers from both parties about new federal laws to penalize
distribution of malicious forgeries and impersonations, including deepfakes.
“We’ve been encouraged that the uptake has been swift,” she adds.
Last week, senators Marco Rubio, the Republican of
Florida, and Mark Warner, the Democrat from Virginia, both of whom are members
of the Senate Intelligence Committee, wrote to Facebook and 10 other social
media sites seeking more details of how they plan to detect and respond to
malicious deepfakes. The legislators cautioned that fake clips could have a
“corrosive impact on our democracy.”
Ajder of
Deeptrace plays down fears that a fake clip could significantly affect the 2020
election. But the startup’s report notes that growing awareness of the
technology can fuel political deception.
In June, a Malaysian political aide was arrested after a
video surfaced purportedly showing him having sex with the country’s minister
of economic affairs. (Gay sex is illegal in Malaysia.) The country’s prime
minister said the video was a deepfake, but independent experts have been
unable to determine if the video was manipulated. “Deepfakes can provide
plausible deniability,” Ajder says.
To conduct its analysis, Deeptrace used a
mixture of manual searching and web scraping tools and data analysis to record
known deepfakes from major porn sites, mainstream video services such as
YouTube, and deepfake-specific sites and forums.
That methodology is imperfect. It couldn’t account for
deepfakes that successfully passed off as real clips or probe every hidden
online corner. Jack Clark, policy director at independent AI lab OpenAI, says
the Deeptrace report is nonetheless a welcome attempt to gather empirical
evidence on deepfakes, which has been lacking.
Clark predicts that fake videos won’t be the first
example of unsavory consequences from the spread of artificial intelligence tools
through commercialization and open source.
“Individuals will mess around with the technology and some of the ways they
mess around will be harmful and offensive,” he notes.
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