Naughty America Offers Fans Chance to Star in Deepfake Porn Video

Late last year, AVN.com reported on a new artificial intelligence-driven video technology that was using porn to get noticed. The creators of the new type of AI videos, who started off posting then on the internet forum Reddit, called their creation “deepfakes.” Basically, deepfakes videos use AI to superimpose the faces of celebrities—or even just ordinary people—on the bodies of porn performers in a way that appeared more seamless than any previous “fake porn” digital technology. The end product looked, realistically, as if the celebs had appeared in hardcore porn scenes. The problems were quickly evident, and Reddit as well as other online forums and sites, including PornHub, moved quickly to pull the deepfake porn videos from their platforms. Because the celebrities whose faces were used did not consent to appear in porn videos, and for that matter neither did the porn performers whose bodies appear in the underlying videos used to create the deepfakes, the video fell under the sites’ ban on non-consensual porn. But Naughty America says that it can use deepfake technology for more positive purposes. “Deepfakes don’t hurt people, people using deepfakes hurt people,” the company’s CEO Andreas Hronopoulos told the tech magazine Fast Company.  According to the Fast Company report on the new Naughty America project,  the porn producer’s legal department will get involved to make sure that no one’s face or body is used without permission. A sample of the new VR deepfake video can be viewed at this link (the clip is NSFW). “The Artificial Intelligence and machine-learning technology used for these creations now allows Naughty America to not just customize VR porn videos for consumers, but to also to personalize VR experiences for them, too, by adding their own face, or that of a consenting loved one, to a specific fantasy,” the company announced in an article on its site. “We always look at new technology to see if it can help people find their fantasy,” Hronopoulos told Fast Company. “I’m really excited to see what people will ask for.” But while Naughty America’s new deepfakes services promises to be helpful rather than harmful, big internet firms are still wrestling with ways to cope with the new technology, which is not only being used for porn, but can be employed also to create realistic-looking “fake news” in which politicians and public figures can be made to say and do things they never really said or did, according to a CNN report on the new technology.  “The opportunity for malicious liars is going to grow by leaps and bounds," University of Texas School of Law Professor and deepfakes researcher Bobby Chesney told CNN. Image via Naughty America screen capture