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Pornhub Hasn't Been Actively Enforcing Its Deepfake Ban (engadget.com)

Pornhub said in February that it was banning AI-generated deepfake videos, but BuzzFeed News found that it's not doing a very good job at enforcing that policy. The media company found more than 70 deepfake videos -- depicting graphic fake sex scenes with Emma Watson, Scarlett Johanson, and other celebrities -- were easily searchable from the site's homepage using the search term "deepfake." From the report: Shortly after the ban in February, Mashable reported that there were dozens of deepfake videos still on the site. Pornhub removed those videos after the report, but a few months later, BuzzFeed News easily found more than 70 deepfake videos using the search term "deepfake" on the site's homepage. Nearly all the videos -- which included graphic and fake depictions of celebrities like Katy Perry, Scarlett Johansson, Daisy Ridley, and Jennifer Lawrence -- had the word "deepfake" prominently mentioned in the title of the video and many of the names of the videos' uploaders contained the word "deepfake." Similarly, a search for "fake deep" returned over 30 of the nonconsensual celebrity videos. Most of the videos surfaced by BuzzFeed News had view counts in the hundreds of thousands -- one video featuring the face of actor Emma Watson garnered over 1 million views. Some accounts posting deepfake videos appeared to have been active for as long as two months and have racked up over 3 million video views. "Content that is flagged on Pornhub that directly violates our Terms of Service is removed as soon as we are made aware of it; this includes non-consensual content," Pornhub said in a statement. "To further ensure the safety of all our fans, we officially took a hard stance against revenge porn, which we believe is a form of sexual assault, and introduced a submission form for the easy removal of non-consensual content." The company also provided a link where users can report any "material that is distributed without the consent of the individuals involved."

52 of 97 comments (clear)

  1. "fake sex scenes with Emma Watson" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    (rushes to PornHub)

    1. Re:"fake sex scenes with Emma Watson" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Congratulations, you are now gay.

  2. I don't see any movie stars by future+assassin · · Score: 1
    --
    by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
    1. Re:I don't see any movie stars by zioncat · · Score: 1
  3. Any Natalie Portman? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Something involving hot grits, maybe?

  4. Computer says no by bitchtits · · Score: 1

    I searched Pornhub for deepfake. "We're sorry, but the requested search cannot be found. Broaden your search." Slashdotted? I only want to see a technical demo. Any links?

    1. Re:Computer says no by Brett+Buck · · Score: 1

      "Technical Demo". Very good.

      You used to read Playboy for the articles, right?

    2. Re: Computer says no by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      They block searching for that word.

      Try pornhub deepfake in Google.

  5. Buzzfeed hard at work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Over at buzzfeed it must be a slow news day, then a fast news day, then a slow news day, then a messy news day...

    All puns completely intentional.

    1. Re:Buzzfeed hard at work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      When do we care about Buzzfeed? They are not reputable? That site is a joke. imho its like a mild "The Onion."

    2. Re: Buzzfeed hard at work by greenwow · · Score: 2

      He worked for Perkins Coie, and I think still works there, here in Seattle that I've done IT work for during the Christine Gregoire dirty election. I liked doing work at their location since I got parking paid for, and they're only a couple of blocks from the main library. I think it's disingenuous of you to try to separate Hillary from her campaign's top lawyer.

    3. Re:Buzzfeed hard at work by murdocj · · Score: 1

      You left out the UFOs, the grassy knoll and JR Ewing.

    4. Re:Buzzfeed hard at work by mjwx · · Score: 1

      At a Buzzfeed office.

      Boss: HARRISON... I bloody well told you to stop watching Porn at the office.
      /furious clicking
      Serf: Erm... I wasn't watching porn.
      Boss: Then what the Sam hell were you doing.
      Serf: Uhhh.... Researching... Yes, researching an article (mumbles) that's the ticket.
      Boss: What about?
      Serf: Errr... ah! you know that fake deep stuff, the celebrity heads on pornstars bodies?
      Boss: Go on.
      Serf: Well apparently they're still doing it.
      Boss: Hmmm.... I smell a Buzzfeed worthy story here, make a top 10 list of things you can believe and many clicks will be generated. Good work Harrison.
      /serf wipes sweat from brow, goes back to PornHub.

      Remember, someone at Buzzfeed has just been paid to surf porn.

      --
      Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
  6. Re:Young Emma Watson? by bitchtits · · Score: 1

    Underage much?

  7. I found some by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    https://www.pornhub.com/video/search?search=deepfakeporn

  8. Plausible deniability by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm really of two minds on this subject.

    On one hand, I can certainly understand how any public figure - or heck, even if you're a complete unknown - you wouldn't want to see these types of fake videos of yourself being made and published for all to see.

    On the other - lets not forget The Fappening. If these so-called deep fake videos become indistinguishable from the real thing, then you have plausible deniability when your actual videos *do* leak. If anything, the more there is, the more likely they'll get lost in the noise.

    1. Re:Plausible deniability by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

      you have plausible deniability when your actual videos *do* leak.

      I am not sure denying it is the best strategy. Paris Hilton was a near-nobody before her "leaked" sex video thrust her into a life of reality TV stardom. She inherited a few million, but has earned more than $100M on her own with TV shows, fragrances, fashion lines, etc.

      Vanessa Hudgens was a fading child star when her "leaked" nude photos led to some mature movie and TV roles.

  9. Re:Wait, so creimer is by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Save it for a rainy day, Mr. President.

  10. If there's only 70 of them... by greenwow · · Score: 1

    then it sounds like they're doing a damn good job considering they had over 4 million videos uploaded just last year.

    1. Re:If there's only 70 of them... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      Their business model is 90% copyright violation. Policing their site too well would just increase their liability for the infringement, or get 90% of the content removed.

      Their policy is very much to ignore everything until it is reported, and there is little incentive for users to report this stuff.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  11. More useful replacements, please! by ffkom · · Score: 2

    Why would I want the face of some actor in some porn - I mean - who looks at faces in pornography, anyway?

    I would rather prefer a lot if people spent that lot of CPU time on replacing ugly looking bodies with ones that are beautifully shaped and come without weird piercings and tattoos...

    1. Re:More useful replacements, please! by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      There's an entire category of pornography dedicated to just faces of women experiencing pleasure.

      Or so a friend told me.

  12. Re:Young Emma Watson? by MrL0G1C · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Someone born in 1990 is underage?!?! They have some really strict laws in your state. What is legal age, 40?

    --
    Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
  13. Re:Young Emma Watson? by MrL0G1C · · Score: 2

    Dammit, slashdot totally hid the in-between post.

    --
    Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
  14. Nice. by apoc.famine · · Score: 1

    This is probably upsetting several dozen people in the world.

    --
    Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
    1. Re:Nice. by SeaFox · · Score: 1

      I'm sure it's upsetting at least 70.

  15. Terrible by MrL0G1C · · Score: 1

    Awful behaviour, despicable, I'm not going to bookmark that site at all, not now. How do we bookmark sites again?

    --
    Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
    1. Re:Terrible by viperidaenz · · Score: 2

      How do we bookmark sites again?

      Control-D
      D is for Deepfake.

  16. Why bother? by Holammer · · Score: 3, Insightful

    In a foreseeable future people will have the CPU crunch and software to render deepfake in real-time. ... on a phone!

    1. Re:Why bother? by Digital+Avatar · · Score: 1

      ...with a five minute battery life.

    2. Re:Why bother? by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      Fortunately future phones won't have 5 minutes of battery life.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  17. Re: Young Emma Watson? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    She was born in 1990, the movie he said she was âoecuteâ in was filmed in 2000. She was roughly 10.

  18. Hasn't Deep Porn Enforcing Fake Actively Been Ban by john+of+sparta · · Score: 1

    well, it resembled the OP title enough

  19. Deep fakes but not for porn by MobyDisk · · Score: 2

    So I actually want to try out deep fakes - I can think of a billion hilarious uses for this. Unfortunately, every search result for it is centered on pron. There was even a reddit where people were posting instructions and helpful information - but I think between 99% and 101% of it was pron, and reddit shut it down. Anyone have any legit links to information on how to get started on it that DON'T involve pron?

    1. Re:Deep fakes but not for porn by JudgeFurious · · Score: 1

      Wants information on Deepfakes and isn't interested in porn? Weirdo.

      --
      Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
  20. Wait, what? by dcollins117 · · Score: 1

    Some links would be helpful. Just for research purposes, you see. I think it would be useful to verify these claims, um, first hand.

  21. 'non-consensual?' by Jarwulf · · Score: 1

    So essentially making a cartoon of a public figure is akin to rape now?

    1. Re:'non-consensual?' by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      Everything is rape now. The word rape lost all of its meaning.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    2. Re:'non-consensual?' by JudgeFurious · · Score: 1

      You used the word rape in two successive sentences. Do you have any idea how many people now feel raped by that? Oh shit! Did I just....

      --
      Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
    3. Re:'non-consensual?' by joe_frisch · · Score: 1

      I think the problem is that the images can be presented as real. You may not care if someone draws an insulting cartoon of you, but migt care about a video that appears to show you doing something horribly embarrassing (like buying a windows phone if you are an Apple fanboy), and then distributes that in a way that will make people believe it actually happened.

      If its sexual, than for many people that is worse. Would you really be comfortable with your friends seeing a video that looks like you are engaging in sexual acts of a type, and with people you wouldn't normally interact with?

      Of course taken a step further it could show you engaging in illegal activity - something that could lose you your job or even freedom.

  22. five minutes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

    ...with a five minute battery life.

    Which is juuuuust long enough.

  23. Re:That's not the only problem with PornHub by GuB-42 · · Score: 1

    AFAIK, age of consent doesn't matter. The age of consent is the age where people can legally consent to have sex, but it doesn't mean they can shoot porn. The minimum age for that is 18 is every country I know of where porn is legal.

  24. Maybe 'cause nobody gives a shit? by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    People want to see it, Pornhub wants to show what people want to see, what's their motivation to ban it without being forced?

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    1. Re:Maybe 'cause nobody gives a shit? by JudgeFurious · · Score: 2

      Exactly and to be perfectly fair why bother trying to force this away at all? It's not going away and if anything it's only going to get worse (or "better" depending on what your perspective is). This isn't something people can just wish into non-existence and there's no realistic way to undo it. It was inevitable that we'd all get machines powerful enough to do this and that someone would work out how to do it and then make it easy enough for anyone to download a program and get started. Everything in the history of personal computing has gone down this way. Instead of worrying about who's face is on a 2 minute clip from a porn film people should be excited about how they'll be able to watch a movie someday with their choice of actors in each of the main parts. If you don't like the new guy they cast as Han Solo then no worries. In another 10 years you'll be able to completely replace him with a young Harrison Ford (or Christopher Walken if you just can't get that SNL bit out of your head).

      --
      Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
    2. Re:Maybe 'cause nobody gives a shit? by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      Not to mention that from now on, every celebrity where a sex tape gets leaked can credibly claim that "That isn't me!"

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  25. Re:So wait... by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    I knew that. What astonishes me is that people care about them. I mean, ok, maybe if facials are involved...

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  26. Re:This sudden outrage is strange by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I don't understand the sudden outrage over this issue.

    It needs to get into the ether so normies know about it. My guess: something huge is going to drop involving an American elected official which will be true, but they will be able to deny because everyone knows some Russian hackers can make deepfakes.

  27. the article invalidates itself (statistics errors) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    the article invalidates itself, in the first two paragraphs:

    "the site, which averages over 100 billion video views a year."

    "While banned material frequently slips through the cracks on large sites that allow users to upload content"

    "BuzzFeed News easily found more than 70 deepfake videos using the search term "deepfake" on the site's homepage"

    so how many videos are on porn hub? 2,017,953 go to pornhub, and then go to the porn videos page and show the newest videos (this should bring up the maximum number of videos)

    so in the end Buzz feed is complaining about 70 videos amongst 2 million! even if we include their secondary search to bump it up to 100 videos that still puts deepfakes at 0.005% of the total videos. So they admit that banned material frequently slips through the cracks but then manufacturers outrage at 0.005% failure rate...

    Can someone please explain to me why the editors of /. consider BuzzFeed any sort of reputable news source? This isnt news, it is propaganda and manufactured outrage plain and simple and the editors should be able to see that right away from the way the statistics are used. This is supposed to be news for nerds, can you please start using your brains when you process these submissions? Maybe when you get these submissions you could do some simple statistics reviews, like for example if they dont use a percentage of the total and instead rely on using large counts to convey their idea you may want to seriously consider finding a secondary source?

    for example pornhub claims that they recieve 80 million hits DAILY yet this article is freaking out about videos with a couple hundred thousand views without showing how long these videos were up. Come on now, this is BS news made specifically to manufacture outrage through the twisting of statistics.
    The math nerds are starting to get pissed!

  28. This represents a real danger: child porn fakes by joe_frisch · · Score: 2

    I see a real risk in this technology: imagine the effect of doing a good fake of a political candidate sexually abusing a child. There might be lots of denials, but it would be difficult to completely reject. With our current level of concern (rational or not) about abuse of children, it would gather a lot of attention, and even risk prison for the victim.

    The alternative of making fake child porn (eg no real children involved) is illegal, but I don't think represents as much of a risk

  29. Re:We have to BAN this author out of slashdot.org by najajomo · · Score: 1

    Internet fapping off to fake images of Emma Watson is not engaging in sex positive biologically driven mating. I'm kinda picturing you here:
    --

    @Anonymous Fapper: "bruh! lol you need to take a chill pill. First of all if you are trying to speak for techies maybe you should do your research. If i want to find a prostitute i don't go to pornhub, there are plenty of other online services that i could use (most of them highlighted through the SESTA bill reporting)

    also, it has been proven time and time again that the banning of prostitution is what promotes people trafficking and sexual violence because the prostitutes cannot go to the police to report any of that. Plus it just makes the exchange just more efficient overall, some people don't need to pay for sex but they will to reduce the time trying to find it.

    Some people (usually the smarter ones out there) are sex positive because they realize that biologically we are driven to mate with as many people as possible. Its a survival mechanism that is built into almost every living being on this planet. The idea of monogamy is so rare in this world that it is considered a outlier.

    So maybe you should just take a look at your own masochistic tendencies before you go harping on people who just want to let their freak flag fly. Yes i am saying that abstaining from enjoying sexual relationships is a masochistic way of punishing yourself in a sexual manner. In conclusion your puritan morals make you just as dirty a person as the rest of us.

    Also it is kind of arrogant to assume that your moral compass is the one that ALL smart people would use. Personally i would suggest that you go do some traveling around the world and try some new experiences."

  30. Welcome to slashdot Internet Fapping :] by najajomo · · Score: 1

    fap fap fap .. fap fap .. fap .. uuurgh ref !

  31. Re: Young Emma Watson? by baristabrian · · Score: 1

    Muhammad, so-called prophet of Islam, raped a 9-year old girl. Muslims called it a marriage.

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    -- "I'm not in a hurry; I'm in Hawaii." The Homeless Guy