A San Francisco City attorney has launched what he calls a “first-of-its-kind” lawsuit against 16 so-called ‘nudify’ websites and apps, that allegedly use AI to allow you to create non-consensual deepfake content of real women.
Attorney David Chiu announced the lawsuit, which has been filed against sites and apps based both in the US and abroad. The sites are accused of breaking California state and US federal laws regarding deepfake porn, revenge porn and child abuse material, plus California’s Unfair Competition Law.
The 16 sites or apps named in the lawsuit include those run by Sol Ecom Inc., Briver LLC, Itai Tech
Ltd, Defirex OÜ, Itai OÜ, Augustin Gribinets, and also cites 50 unnamed individuals in the suit. We are not naming the sites here, to avoid unintentional promotion of them. The lawsuit seeks to shut down the sites and apps, have injunctions implemented to prevent their owners from creating similar services again, plus unspecified civil penalties.
The legalities in the US around non-consensual AI deepfake porn depicting adults often fall into grey areas, with the technology progressing far quicker than the laws governing it. However, in July 2024 new anti-deepfake legislation passed a US senate vote.
The new Defiance Act, if it becomes federal law, will allow citizens to sue individuals who “knowingly produce, distribute, or receive” non-consensual sexually explicit digital forged content.
The US politicians introducing the bipartisan Defiance Act to the Senate said in a statement: “The laws have not kept up with the spread of this abusive content.” The bill came after the 2023 launch of the Preventing Deepfakes of Intimate Images Act, which sought to criminalize sharing non-consensual deepfake porn.
The San Francisco lawsuit alleges that some of the 16 sites or apps named as defendants could be used to create deepfake nude content of children, while others ‘only’ create deepfakes featuring adults.
Attorney David Chiu, who is behind the lawsuit, noted that the FBI has warned the public about an increase in the amount of extortion schemes using non-consensual AI-generated porn. “Generative AI has enormous promise, but as with all new technologies, there are unintended consequences and criminals seeking to exploit the new technology,” he said.
“We all need to do our part to crack down on bad actors using AI to exploit and abuse real people, including children,” Chiu added.
Indeed, the issue of non-consensual AI porn deepfakes has risen to the fore in 2024, largely down to many female celebrities finding porn deepfakes of them spread online without their consent.
Recently Google updated its functionality, to hide deepfake nude image results from the results of its main search engine. The company now aims to promote verified news articles about the effects of deepfake porn through its search engine, instead of actually showing deepfake nudes.
Beyond the US, other countries are similarly cracking down on non-consensual deepfake porn. Creating such content is set to become illegal in England and Wales.
In Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has sued two men for defamation for allegedly creating deepfake porn depicting a fake version of her.
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