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AI-generated fake porn featuring female celebrities is sold in China
Chinese media outlets find explicit deepfake videos on internet platforms
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This article originally appeared on ABACUS
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.
Illegal peddlers are selling videos that use AI software to stitch faces of celebrities onto pornographic clips, according to The Beijing News and Global Times. These recent reports are highlighting the difficulties of combating the spread of fake videos online.
These types of manipulated videos, dubbed deepfakes, began surfacing in the dark corners of the internet around two years ago. They’ve since been used to make Barack Obama and Mark Zuckerberg say things they never said. And equally disconcerting, we’ve also seen the faces of Scarlett Johansson and Gal Gadot inserted into porn films.
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In China, deepfakes were thrown into the national spotlight in February when a video that splices a major actress into a 25-year-old TV show became a top-trending story on Weibo. The clip itself seemed harmless, but it triggered questions on what could happen if the technology was used for more nefarious purposes.
Now, it appears, the country is finally getting some disturbing answers.
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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.
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