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New: A shadowy AI service has transformed more than 100,000 photos of women into fake nudes. The bot's administrator says members get to "make fantasy a reality" https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/10/20/deep-fake-nudes/
I'm not linking to the bot, because I'm not a dirtbag, but many of the fake nudes are sadly convincing. The original photos came from unsuspecting women's selfies, Instagram and TikTok accounts. And some of those targeted were girls younger than 18 https://wapo.st/2HpGhta
The fake-nude bot's leader victim-blames the women for posting photos of themselves online, telling me (in Russian): "If girls themselves behave cheekily, this is their desire." Many of the women were pictured in normal clothes; one was in a wedding dress https://wapo.st/2HpGhta
I found one woman, an art student, who'd had an image of her (in a tank top) taken from her Instagram and turned into a fake nude. She said, “I believe in karma, and what comes around for them won’t be any cleaner than their own actions" https://wapo.st/2HpGhta
Let's be real: The drivers of this kind of AI research are almost all men. Its victims are almost all women. Would they "be so cavalier if that bad shit was happening to them, as opposed to some woman down the street?" https://wapo.st/2HpGhta
What's the sound of a fake-nude bot administrator deleting an entire chat
Really important point here. We should worry less about the speculative threat of a political deepfake attack and fight back more against the tech as it's being used in the here and now: to harass and disparage women ( https://wapo.st/2Tw7Vqd ) https://twitter.com/qjurecic/status/1318579617259753474
Ton of gratitude for all the help and smart research on this from @daniellecitron, @ma_franks, @drbrittparis, @wiczipedia and others; the awesome @ikhurshudyan for translating lots of Russian chat messages; and for journalists like @samleecole, a deepfake/-nude scoop machine
