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An AI-Powered App Has Resulted in an Explosion of Convincing Face-Swap Porn (vice.com)
Samantha Cole, reporting for Motherboard: In December, Motherboard discovered a Redditor named 'deepfakes' quietly enjoying his hobby: Face-swapping celebrity faces onto porn performers' bodies. He made several convincing porn videos of celebrities -- including Gal Gadot, Maisie Williams, and Taylor Swift -- using a machine learning algorithm, his home computer, publicly available videos, and some spare time. Since we first wrote about deepfakes, the practice of producing AI-assisted fake porn has exploded. More people are creating fake celebrity porn using machine learning, and the results have become increasingly convincing. A redditor even created an app specifically designed to allow users without a computer science background to create AI-assisted fake porn. All the tools one needs to make these videos are free, readily available, and accompanied with instructions that walk novices through the process.
... is that people who are procuring illegal (in particular, kiddie) porn could then hide behind the response of "I thought it was fake". If it went the other way though and actually destroyed the child and exploitative porn market then it would be mostly for the better.
It goes a lot deeper than that. For example, now that I know this is so easy to do, if I'm ever on a jury, I can't really consider any video evidence as enough for a criminal conviction, unless it has a documented chain of custody.
Likewise, any video that would normally cause public scandal can be dismissed as, "oh, it's fake!" even if it isn't, which might actually be a net benefit for public figures and those in power.