Hundreds of Mundane AI Apps Are Hiding Sexually Abusive Deepfake Features - WIRED
By Google News Technology ·
All of this is cover for what appears to be the app’s true purpose: creating sexually abusive deepfake images. A WIRED investigation found the app is part of a network of more than 400 connected domains and apps that, like Viefur, often claim to be everyday services—such as language tuition or AI workout coaches. When accessed under certain conditions, however, apps in the network stealthily load a web interface allowing the generation of explicit AI sexual images and videos using photos users upload. The apps include AI scenes such as “bedroom rape” and “threatening knife,” where a man holds a knife to a woman’s neck. The network was discovered hiding in plain sight, by multiple researchers, after they investigated links from thousands of video ads containing explicit deepfake content that were published on Meta’s Facebook and Instagram. As WIRED has reported in recent months, hundreds of these ads contained AI generated child sexual abuse material, including images of real children and a member of a European royal family. The ads reached tens of thousands of people and have prompted investigations from regulators around the world. In each case, the ads linked out to the deceptive apps in Apple and Google’s app stores—allowing people to generate explicit images and make payments using Apple and Google Pay. The network behind the nudify apps appears to have been publishing them for around a year, at times publishing dozens per week. This is despite Google, Apple, and Meta saying they enforce their policies that do not allow harmful deepfake content on their platforms. The apps and domains investigated by WIRED appear to be run by Chinese developers and a Hong Kong registered entity called KeLing Technology Limited, according to a review of web domains and how the…
Originally published by Google News Technology