“When we look at dark image abuse, a lot of the tools and weapons used have come from the open source space,” says Ajdar. But they often start with well-meaning developers, he says. “Someone creates something they think is interesting or cool and someone with bad intentions recognizes its dangerous potential and weaponizes it.”
Some, such as the Unable Repository in August, have purpose-built communities around them for express use. The model positioned itself as a tool for deepfake porn, Ajdar claims, becoming a “funnel” for abuse, which primarily targets women.
More videos uploaded On a porn-streaming site Famous deepfake targets celebrities Emma Watson, Taylor Swift, and Anya Taylor-Joy, as well as other lesser-known but many real women, in sexual situations by an account credited with AI models downloaded from GitHub. .
The creators freely described the tools they used, including two scrubbed by GitHub but whose code remains in other existing repositories.
Criminals looking to deepfake congregate online in many places, including secretive community forums on Discord and deepfake prevention efforts in plain sight on Reddit. A Redditor offered his services using the archived repository’s software on September 29. “Can anyone do my cousin,” asked another.
Torrents of the main repository banned by GitHub in August are also available in other corners of the web, showing how difficult it is to police. Open source deepfake software across the board. There have been other deepfake porn tools, such as the app DeepNude Likewise taken down Before new versions come out.
“There are so many models, so many different forks in the models, so many different versions, it can be difficult to keep track of them all,” says Elizabeth Seger, director of digital policy at cross-party UK think tank Demos. is “Once a model is made publicly available for open source download, there is no way to publicly rollback it,” she adds.
A deepfake porn creator with 13 manipulated indecent videos of female celebrities has taken to a major GitHub repository marketed as an “NSFW” version of another project encouraging responsible use and telling users not to use it for explicit nudity. said for “Learning all available Face Swap AI from GitHub, not using online services,” their profile on the tube site brazenly states.
GitHub had already disabled this NSFW version when WIRED identified the deepfake video. But other repositories branded as “unlocked” versions of the model were available on the platform on January 10, including one with 2,500 “stars”.
“It is technically true that once [a model is] There it cannot be reversed. But we can still make it harder for people to access,” Seger says.
If left unchecked, she adds, the potential for deepfake “porn” damage isn’t just psychological. Its knock-on effects include intimidation and manipulation of women, minorities and politicians, as seen with Political deepfakes Influencing women politicians globally.
But it’s not too late to get the problem under control, and platforms like GitHub have options, Seger says, including intervening at the point of upload. “If you put a model on GitHub and GitHub says no, and all the hosting platforms say no, it becomes difficult for a normal person to get that model.”
Curbing deepfake porn created with open source models is up to policy makers, tech companies, developers and, of course, creators of offensive content as well.
According to the nonprofit Public Citizen, at least 30 U.S. states also have some laws addressing deep-faith porn, including bans. Law trackerHowever definitions and policies vary, and some laws only cover minors. Deepfakes in the UK will also soon feel the force of the law following the government’s announcement Committing the crime of creating a sexually explicit deepfakeAlong with this, their relationship will also take place on January 7.
