internet

They Appeared in Deepfake Porn Videos Without Their Consent. Few Laws Protect Them.

Deceptively manipulated pornography used the likenesses of Twitch stars without their consent, and now they're calling for more to be done. 

Stock photo
iStock via Getty Images

Artificial intelligence-generated pornography featuring the faces of nonconsenting women is becoming more pervasive online, and the issue is spilling into the world of popular influencers and streamers.

In January, the British livestreamer “Sweet Anita,” who has 1.9 million followers on Twitch, where she posts videos of her gaming and interacting with followers, was notified that a trove of fake sexually explicit videos featuring the faces of Twitch streamers was circulating online.

She quickly Googled her name alongside the term “deepfake,” a word used to describe a highly realistic but fake, digitally manipulated video or image, and a technique that is increasingly being used — typically without consent — for pornography purposes. Anita’s initial search brought up several videos that showed her face edited onto another person’s body.

Major platforms like RedditFacebookTikTok and Twitter have attempted to address the spread of deepfake porn with policy changes. While each of the platforms specifically prohibits the material, some have struggled to moderate it. A search of Twitter, for instance, found deepfake pornographic videos claiming to feature Twitch stars, along with hashtags promoting deepfakes.  

In the United States, while the majority of states have laws that ban revenge porn, only New York, Virginia, Georgia and California have laws that specifically address deepfake media, according to the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative. Meanwhile, the United Kingdom announced in November last year that it was planning to criminalize explicit nonconsensual deepfake media.

Read the full story here at NBCNews.com.

Contact Us