This archive report was first published on 29 June 2019.
On June 27, 2019, a disturbing website called Deepnude.com emerged, offering users a glimpse into a horrific AI-enhanced world where photos of women could be undressed via algorithms and shared with reckless abandon.
The website, initially reported on by Samantha Cole at Vice's Motherboard on June 27, 2019, began selling a $50 Windows and Linux application just a few days earlier that could take a photo of a clothed woman and, using artificial intelligence, replace it with a fairly realistic-looking naked image of her.
There was a free version, too, that would place a big watermark on resulting images. DeepNude was meant to work on women, specifically. It would insert a vulva, in place of pants, in a photo of a man.
The images it created in the online samples didn't look perfect, but they were good enough to make a casual observer gasp. And such AI-crafted images are likely to keep spreading: any copies of DeepNude that are already out there could easily be replicated, and other similar programs are likely to pop up.
According to GoDaddy, the service through which DeepNude.com was registered, the site was registered by an organization in Estonia calling itself DeepInstruction.
Though DeepNude could create images that look like realistic nudes, they're not actual photos of naked bodies. So while there are a growing number of laws criminalizing non-consensual pornography, such as revenge porn, the images churned out by such AI-assisted software aren't covered by existing legislation.
Yet, those depicted in them feel the same kind of invasion of sexual privacy as those who have had actual naked photos spread around. 'It has the same impact,' said Danielle Citron, a law professor at Boston University and author of the book 'Hate Crimes in Cyberspace.' 'You feel like you have 1,000 eyes on your body.'
