Deepfakes porn are no longer confined to celebrities: they can target everyone. This is the alarming observation made by the American media NBC News about these fake pornographic videos, in which the face of a porn actress is replaced by that of another woman, without her consent. The offer of these videos which seem as real as life would have multiplied for a few months, in particular after the diffusion, at the beginning of January, of deepfakes porn by Atrioc, a popular streamer, during one of its streams.
After this episode, web traffic to the main deepfake porn sites exploded, noted researcher Genevieve Oh, interviewed by our colleagues. And a real business would have developed with sites, with offers published on Discord, payments with visa cards and even subscriptions to access a fake video platform. Alongside this professionalization, the offer of deepfakes, hitherto confined to celebrities, would have diversified. For Noelle Martin, an Australian lawyer interviewed by our colleagues, “ more and more ordinary women, like you and me, are targeted “. Same story with this columnist from the Guardian who does not wonder if, but when his image will appear in this type of video.
Custom fake videos offered on Discord
Because the AI tools to do this type of editing are more and more accessible and affordable. Against 65 dollars, content creators offer to produce pornographic videos on demand, with the face of the person of their choice – without the customer having to provide the slightest consent from the person in question. The latter would use Discord to offer their service, everything is payable by visa or mastercard, or in cryptocurrency, explain our colleagues.
The demand would be such that these producers of deepfakes would hire other people to help them create these deepfakes, reports NBC News who was able to consult two job offers. Contacted by our colleagues, Discord declared for its part that it expressly prohibited ” promoting or sharing deepfakes made without permission “. Same story for Visa, which recalled in a press release that the company ” explicitly and unequivocally prohibited the use of our means of payment to pay for this type of content ».
No protection of privacy and image
For non-customized deepfake porn, there are now sites that offer short videos in free access, sort of trailers for longer videos, viewable for a few dollars on another site. However, this type of service should not be authorized, deplored Maître Martin, because such practices raise obvious problems of protection of privacy and protection of its image. They should lead a victim to obtain damages, because the use of his image in such content constitutes a particularly violent act.
Last October, the streamer Maghla lamented “ montages on the bodies of porn actresses aiming at her, as well as the existence of Discords dedicated to fake ‘nudes’ and guys who burn themselves on streamers with sharing of live screenshots and fake montages “. And the fact that Twitch, like other digital players, have spoken out against these montages does not change the situation for the moment.
Because the problem for victims of deepfakes is that they cannot necessarily turn to the law, at least for the moment. Firstly because not all countries have often yet provided for a text allowing this practice to be condemned. In the United States, for example, only four states have adopted specific legislation on deepfakes. In France, there are many articles that condemn the publication of a montage made with the image of a person without his authorization, but in practice, the authors of these videos are difficult to identify. And once a deepfake is on the Net, it is very difficult to remove it. For the lawyer interviewed by our colleagues, it is however time to seize this problem head-on.