Baller Alert Entertainment & Lifestyle
Whew! Imagine seeing your face in a porn video without your consent. Well, this is a phenomenon going on with TikTok stars, sadly without their consent.
The disgraceful trend is known as “deepfake porn”—digital manipulation in video form by using artificial intelligence technology that places an individual’s face on another’s body.
While usually deepfake is done with celebrities and for the spread of disinformation in politics, the use of 96% of this technology in the arena of porn is very problematic. What’s worse is that its majority targets women, a report from The AI Firm, Sensity reports.
In the past deepfake technology was a little more detailed and complex, which is why celebrities were used—- in the past, the swap out required thousands of photos and several minutes of video to do the swap, RollingStone reported. But now, with the advancement of technology and accessibility, TikTok stars have become the target.
Last summer, an unidentified TikTok creator was at the tough end of it after a pornographic video was made using the victim’s face. The explicit video made its rounds on Instagram. After being shared on an IG account, the creator responded, “It’s a deepfake but still, my parents on this app, chill,” the creator said.
Sensity recently published a report on an Al Bot on the encrypted messaging app Telegram, saying that it was being used to make nude and sexually explicit images of women despite having their permission. The difference with this bot was that all it takes is one picture to create the deepfake porn vids.
Deepfake porn creators have found it amusing to go after social media influencers from Instagram and TikTok. “It’s video-based as a platform, so it actually provides more material [to make deepfakes],” says Giorgio Patrini, the CEO of Sensity. “These people are more exposed than if they were just uploading pictures.”
“When you see a deepfake sex video of yourself, it feels viscerally like it’s your body. It’s an appropriation of your sexual identity without your permission. It feels like a terrible autonomy and body violation, and it rents space in your head,” Boston University School of Law professor Danielle Citron said. Furthermore, it can negatively impact the finances of a person’s business after a fake porn video gets out. This was the case for one well-known female YouTuber who lost a brand partnership when someone made a deepfake video with her face.
Internal TikTok data obtained by the New York Times revealed roughly a third of its users are under 14. This puts them at an increased risk to this disturbing phenomenon. Sadly, it’s typical for these app creators to find their faces on adult sites like Pornhub. A 17-year-old was a victim of this. Her mother told Rollingstone that her daughter was “mortified” and didn’t want to go back to school after this cybercrime happened to her.
“She very innocently posted that video. She didn’t want to get involved with Pornhub. It’s not a lesson you should have to learn at 17.” Thankfully, Pornhub learned what happen and immediately took down the video; however, they deny this happens on its site frequently. But there is an evident problem. Rolling Stone located two dozen examples of prominent TikTok creators shown in deepfake porn videos. Notably, most of them are posted on sites specifically for deepfake porn but eventually spread to social media platforms, despite the ban of these types of videos.
Twitter is one of the social media platforms that get these types of videos, say its policy bans deepfakes, as well as any “intimate photos or videos of someone that were produced or distributed without their consent.” But somehow, the platform has yet to remove a tweet that contains a deepfake porno video. The same for other tube sites, including Pornhub, who is against deepfake porn videos, is very easily found.
“They’ve basically just banned people from labeling deepfakes. People could still upload them and use a different name,” says former Sensity researcher Henry Ajder. He estimates that “you probably have somewhere in the low thousands” of deepfakes on Pornhub.
In an attempt stop the spread of deepfake porn videos, Rolling Stones has chosen not to name the site that is among the most popular for deepfakes, but they did want to mention that the site has a Discord server allowing more than 100 members to requests who they want to see in a porn video. Notably, the site posts those over the age of 18. It has allowed a 17-year-old to be its most requested TikTok creator. Two weeks after she turned 18, she appeared in a video.
People are sadly mistaken to believe that deepfake videos are a victimless crime, “The harm is so far away from people that it seems like a game,” Citron says. “You can appropriate someone’s body, and you don’t have to ask them.” The deepfake pornography phenomenon stems from a “culture of impunity,” or the idea that young men are entitled to do as they please with women’s bodies.
Citron called the crime a “virtual sexual assault” done by some men who have a sense of entitlement to do what they want.
