Julia, 21, has received fake nude photos of herself generated by artificial intelligence. The phenomenon is exploding.

“I’d already heard about deepfakes and deepnudes (…) but I wasn’t really aware of it until it happened to me. It was a slightly anecdotal event that happened in other people’s lives, but it wouldn’t happen in mine”, thought Julia, a 21-year-old Belgian marketing student and semi-professional model.

At the end of September 2023, she received an email from an anonymous author. Subject: "Realistic? “We wonder which photo would best resemble you”, she reads.

Attached were five photos of her.

In the original content, posted on her social networks, Julia poses dressed. In front of her eyes are the same photos. Only this time, Julia is completely naked.

Julia has never posed naked. She never took these photos. The Belgian model realises that she has been the victim of a deepfake.

  • nexusband@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    This is going to be a serious issue in the future - either society changes and these things are going to be accepted or these kind of generating ai models have to be banned. But that’s still not going to be a “security” against it…

    I also think we have to come up with digital watermarks that are easy to use…

    • Justin@lemmy.jlh.name
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      8 months ago

      Honestly, I see it as kinda freeing. Now people don’t have to worry about nudes leaking any more, since you can just say they’re fake. Somebody starts sending around deepfakes of me? OK, whatever, weirdo, it’s not real.

      • Dadd Volante@sh.itjust.works
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        8 months ago

        I’m guessing it’s easier to feel that way if your name is Justin.

        If it was Justine, you might have issues.

        Weird how that works.

        • Justin@lemmy.jlh.name
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          8 months ago

          Fair enough. Ideally it would be the same for women too, but we’re not there as a society yet.

          • steakmeoutt@sh.itjust.works
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            8 months ago

            Such an empty response. Do you know that women have to do things on dates out of fear of being killed? Literally they have a rational fear of being killed by their male dates and it’s a commonly known and accepted fear that many women relate.

            Society moving forward is a nice idea, women feeling safe is much better one and attitudes like yours are part of the reason women generally do not feel safe. Deepfakes are not freeing at all.

    • tsonfeir@lemm.ee
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      8 months ago

      We gotta ban photo editing software too. Shit, we gotta ban computers entirely. Shit, now we have to ban electricity.

      • Ryzen11v@ani.social
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        8 months ago

        I’m so tired of this “Don’t blame the tool” bs argument used to divert responsibility.

        Blame the fucking tool and restrict it.

        • fidodo@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Why not blame the spread? You can’t ban the tool, it’s easily accessible software and that only requires easily accessible consumer hardware, and you can even semi easily train your own models using easily accessible porn on the Internet, so if you want to ban it outright, you’d need to ban the general purpose tool, all porn, and the knowledge to train image generation models. If you mean ban the online apps that sell the service on the cloud, I can get behind that, it would increase the bar to create them a little, but that is far from a solution.

          But, we already have laws against revenge porn and Internet harassment. I think the better and more feasible approach that doesn’t have far reaching free speech implications would be to simply put heavy penalties on spreading nudes images of people against their will, whether those images are real or fake. It’s harassment as revenge porn, and I didn’t see how it’s different if it’s a realistic fake. If there is major punishment for spreading these images then I think that will take care of discouraging the spread of the images for the vast majority of people.

        • tsonfeir@lemm.ee
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          8 months ago

          Social media is a tool used to spread misinformation. Should social media be banned?

              • fidodo@lemmy.world
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                8 months ago

                The companies that host and sell an online image to nude service using a tuned version of that tool specifically designed to convert images into nudes are definitely a business model.

                I agree it’s impractical and opens dangerous free speech problems to try and ban or regulate the general purpose software, but, I don’t have a problem with regulating for profit online image generation services that have been advertising the ability to turn images into nudes and have even been advertising their service on non porn sites. Regulating those will at least raise the bar a bit and ensure that there’s isn’t a for profit motive where capitalism will encourage it happening even more.

                We already have revenge porn laws that outlaw the spread of real nudes against someone’s will, I don’t see why the spread of fakes shouldn’t be outlaws similarly.

                • tsonfeir@lemm.ee
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                  8 months ago

                  And I think if those companies can be identified as making the offending image, they should be help liable. IMO, you shouldn’t be able to use a photo without the permission of the person.

    • fidodo@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      I think there’s a big difference between creating them and spreading them, and putting punishments on spreading nudes against someone’s will, real or fake is a better 3rd option. The free speech implications of banning software that’s capable of creating them is too broad and fuzzy, but I think that putting harsh penalties on spreading them on the grounds of harassment would be clear cut and effective. I didn’t see a big difference in between spreading revenge porn and deep fakes and we already have laws against spreading revenge porn.

    • Lemming6969@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      With ai and digital art… What is real? What is a person? What is a cartoon or a similar but not same likeness? In some cases what even is nudity? How old is an ai image? How can anything then be legal or illegal?

      • LethalSmack@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Where did it say anything about a Ministry of Truth deciding what can be posted online? Making it illegal and having a 3rd party decide if every post is allowed are two very different things

        If it’s illegal then there are ramifications for the platform, the user posting it, and the tool that created it.

        Content moderation is already a thing so it’s nothing new. Just one more thing on the list to check for when a post is reported

          • LethalSmack@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            Well, you’re about 20 years too late. It has already started

            See any of the tor sites for examples of what is currently filtered out of the regular internet. It even gets your google account permanently banned if you log in via the tor browser

      • nexusband@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Yeah, sorry - I disagree on every level with your take.

        I am also convinced that at least the LLMs will soon destroy themselves, due to the simple fact that “garbage in, garbage out”.

    • VeganCheesecake
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      8 months ago

      I think we as a society are too uptight about nudity, but that doesn’t mean that creating pictures of people without their consent, which make them feel uncomfortable, is in any way OK.

      • damnthefilibuster@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        They are humiliated only because society has fed them the idea that what they’ve done (in this case not done but happened to them) is wrong. Internalizing shame meted out by society is the real psychological problem we need to fix.

        • tsonfeir@lemm.ee
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          8 months ago

          Society does indeed play a big role, but if someone went around telling lies about you that everyone believed regardless of how much you denied it, that would take a toll on you.

        • sir_pronoun@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          That’s what I meant. Why should it be shameful? If it weren’t, those photos would lose so much of their harm.

        • eatthecake@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Who are you tell people how they ought to feel? The desire for privacy is perfectly normal and you are the one trying to shame people for not wanting naked pictures of themselves everywhere.

    • natecheese@kbin.melroy.org
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      8 months ago

      I think the issue is that there is sexual imagery of the person being created and shared without that persons consent.

      It’s akin to taking nude photos of someone without their consent, or sharing nude photos with someone other than their intended audience.

      Even if there were no stigma attached to nudes, that doesn’t mean someone would their nudes to exist or be shared.

  • werefreeatlast@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Someone at TikTok has all the power to make nudes off every one in the planet except for 5 homeless guys from LA that you don’t want a nude from anyway. Tiktok has the images of you (you idiot) and the hardware and software required to fake you to everyone you know.

    Welcome to China 2.0!

    • VeganCheesecake
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      8 months ago

      No, they don’t. Neither has Instagram, to my knowledge they have two, posted by other people. Now Grindr on the other hand…

      • werefreeatlast@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Oh I would expect Grindr to call this a feature…

        You liked Jeff, but Jer, for an extra $7.53 you can automatically see him naked to reveal the full package!

        • VeganCheesecake
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          8 months ago

          The most unrealistic thing about this is the price. They’d want a twenty, minimum, I feel.

    • graymess@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Pal, what the fuck are you talking about? TikTok and China are not mentioned anywhere in this article and nowhere on TikTok is there an option to generate anyone’s likeness, clothed or unclothed.