
AI-generated fake porn featuring female celebrities is sold in China
Chinese media outlets find explicit deepfake videos on internet platforms
At first glance, graphic videos circulating online in China show some of the country’s most prominent female stars engaged in sexually explicit acts. Then the news dropped: The images are fake.
Now, it appears, the country is finally getting some disturbing answers.

Beijing News reporters on Thursday said they found listings on Alibaba’s second-hand marketplace Xianyu and Baidu’s forum page Tieba advertising deepfakes of female celebrities. Some offer bundles of dozens to hundreds of clips, sold for anywhere from under US$2 to about US$23. Others say they can face-swap any individual, whether a celebrity or not, into any video.
On Friday, Xianyu appeared to have blocked terms such as “AI face-swap” and “face-swap software.” Searching “face-swap video,” however, still yielded listings purporting to sell deepfake software and do-it-yourself tutorials. We were unable to find any explicit listings on Baidu Tieba, although there are still sporadic posts sharing deepfake videos.
Both platforms told us they have taken down the illegal listings. Baidu said they’ve reported the cases to the police. Xianyu said they are continuing to monitor product listings on the platform.
(Abacus is a unit of the South China Morning Post, which is owned by Alibaba.)
One of the challenges of fighting deepfake pornography is that it’s so easy to create. Software can be easily obtained on the internet, allowing anyone to generate deceptively real videos without learning AI coding.

Pornography is illegal in China, though there are currently no official laws that deal specifically with other types of deepfakes. That could change soon.
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