Google is banning Google Ads from promoting deepfake porn, and has decreased the visibility of deepfake porn content in Google searches, as companies, organizations and governments address the worrying rise in deepfake porn’s popularity.
The maker of the world’s most-used online search tool told Bloomberg that it was “continuing to decrease the visibility of involuntary synthetic pornography in search and develop more safeguards as this space evolves.” As a result, deepfake porn appears lower down in Google’s search rankings than it did previously, although it is still discoverable.
Google also said that the company had been “actively developing new protections in search to help people affected by this content, building on our existing policies.” It did not clarify what the protections are.
One thing Google has been clear about is that it won’t tolerate deepfake porn being promoted through Google Ads, once its new updated advert policy kicks in on May 30, 2024. The new policy decrees that “content promoting the creation or distribution of synthetic content that has been altered or generated to be sexually explicit or contain nudity” will be banned.
Sexually explicit material is already banned on Google Ads. Announcing the May 30 policy update, that includes the deepfake porn measures, Google told advertisers that “we take violations of this policy very seriously and consider them egregious. If we find violations of this policy, we will suspend your Google Ads accounts upon detection and without prior warning, and you will not be allowed to advertise with us again.”
The effects of Google throttling the visibility of deepfake porn in search results may already have been seen to some degree. Bloomberg reported that US-based desktop computer search traffic for two of the most-visited deepfake porn sites in the country had experienced up to a quarter less search traffic in the first ten days of May 2024, compared to the previous six-month average.
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The recent rise in prominence of deepfake porn images and video has led to many companies and organizations scrambling to update policies and measures dealing with it. It’s likely that the vast majority of deepfake porn content, including that depicting celebrities, is made without the consent of those seen in it.
The exponential improvements in AI-assisted software used to generate deepfake porn has made it relatively easy to make incredibly realistic such content in a short time. As well as being an ethical violation of those depicted, non-consensual deepfake porn has been used for extortion and revenge porn tactics.
While the deepfake genie is very much out of the bottle, Google’s search throttling and advert ban should send a message that a crackdown may be being taken seriously by major tech players.
Reddit has updated its rules to allow AI-generated porn to be shared on the platform, but has continued to ban non-consensual deepfake porn. Meanwhile, creating non-consensual deepfake porn is set to be made illegal in England and Wales, even if the creator does not share or promote the content.
Earlier this year Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni sued two men for defamation following deepfake porn videos featuring her image being posted online, in a civil case that could set a precedent for deepfake lawsuits in the country.
In 2022 the creator of MrDeepFakes, a deepfake porn sharing website, was the subject of a BBC documentary called Deepfake Porn: Could You Be Next?. “I think that as long as you’re not trying to pass it off as a real thing, that shouldn’t really matter, because it’s basically fake. I don’t really feel that consent is required. It’s a fantasy, it’s not real,” the anonymous site owner said of non-consensual deepfake porn:
Google, as well as anyone with an ethical cell in their head, seems to disagree.
