Photo by Luca Iaconelli on Unsplash
Websites hosting AI-generated nude pictures of real people are witnessing a surge in traffic, a report has revealed.
Graphika, a software firm, in a report released on Friday said it analysed several such websites for the month of September and found an exponsentially increased traffic – a concerning trend aided by a boom in AI tools that facilitate the "undressing" of images.
"A group of 34 synthetic NCII – non-consensual intimate imagery – providers identified by Graphika received over 24 million unique visitors to their websites in September, according to data provided by web traffic analysis firm Similarweb.
"Additionally, the volume of referral link spam for these services has increased by more than 2,000 per cent on platforms including Reddit and X since the beginning of 2023, and a set of 52 Telegram groups used to access NCII services contain at least 1 million users as of September this year," the firm said in its report.
According to Eva Galperin, the director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, more and more ordinary people, including those still in highschool and colleges, are using deepfake technology on regular individuals as targets.
Graphika says a lot of these websites use popular social media to advertise and that most of these apps only work for women.
The "nudify" services, as they are commonly called, have witnessed a staggering surge of over 2,400 per cent in links promoting undressing apps on platforms such as X and Reddit since the start of the year.
This widespread growth raises significant legal and ethical concerns since the images are frequently sourced from social media without the subject's permission or awareness.
Many victims might not even know about these manipulated images and even if they do, they often face difficulties getting law enforcement to investigate or finding the financial resources to take legal action, said Galperin.
Governments are still grappling with legal ways to rein in such unique infringement of privacy.
India recently announced that it will come up with laws to punish 'deepfake' after a popular actress found her face superimposed on an Instagram influencer in a video which went viral on social media.
Though the US government is yet to come up with a comprehensive law agaonst deep fake, it does prohibit such images involving minors.
Recently, a North Carolina child psychiatrist received a 40-year prison sentence for using undressing apps on photos of patients – the first prosecution under the law against such images.
TikTok has blocked the term "undress," a common search term related to these services.
The app warns users that the word may link to behaviour or content against their guidelines but declined further comment when asked.
Similarly, Meta Platforms Inc has started blocking keywords related to searching for undressing apps but declined to provide a comment, Bloomberg reported.
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