AI Porn Ban: Reddit Deletes Original ‘Deepfakes’ Subreddit

Above, screen grab from an SFW example of AI video on GFYcat.com. CYBERSPACE—Just hours after the social media platform Twitter announced that it would ban “deepfakes” porn videos—artificial-intelligence created videos in which a celebrity’s face is digitally pasted onto a performer in a hardcore porn video—the online forum Reddit also announced a ban, and shut down the original “deepfakes” subreddit forum where the fast-spreading phenomenon originated. Deepfakes videos, which sometimes also involve non-celebrities whose faces appear digitally in porn videos, are produced without consent, either of the individuals who are “face swapped” into porn clips, or the of the porn performers in the original, underlying videos that get the AI alterations. Thanks to AI technology, the swapped-in faces can appear extremely realistic, moving and changing facial expressions to fit the video. At about 1 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Wednesday, Reddit announced newly updated policies covering “involuntary pornography” which would include “revenge porn,” but also covers AI-generated fakes in which a person’s face appears in a porn video without that person’s explicit permission. “Reddit prohibits the dissemination of images or video depicting any person in a state of nudity or engaged in any act of sexual conduct apparently created or posted without their permission, including depictions that have been faked,” the newly modified policy reads. Late on Tuesday, Twitter—which unlike many other social media platforms allows posting of sexually explicit images and video—announced policies against AI-generated fake porn, and immediately deleted an account with the user name @mydeepfakes that appeared to be taking requests from users regarding which celebrities they would like to see in fake porn videos. The massive free porn “tube” site Pornhub also on Tuesday said that it would remove deepfakes video on the grounds that the site does not permit uploading of “non-consensual” porn. But a spokesperson for the site told the site Motherboard that Pornhub would remove fake porn content “as soon as we are made aware of it,” leaving open the question of whether Pornhub would proactively search its servers for deepfakes videos in an effort to scrub the site of AI non-consensual porn. A quick Google search conducted by AVN.com on Wednesday afternoon quickly turned up a faked AI video in which movie star Scarlett Johansson’s face appeared in an explicit video. The search also revealed several other deepfakes videos featuring such actresses as Emma Watson, Aubrey Plaza, Gal Gadot and others in videos appearing on the tube site Redtube, which is owned by Pornhub’s parent company, Mindgeek.