Apps and websites that use artificial intelligence to undress women in photos are soaring in popularity, according to researchers.

In September alone, 24 million people visited undressing websites, according to the social network analysis company Graphika.

Many of these undressing, or “nudify,” services use popular social networks for marketing, according to Graphika. For instance, since the beginning of this year, the number of links advertising undressing apps increased more than 2,400% on social media, including on X and Reddit, the researchers said. The services use AI to recreate an image so that the person is nude. Many of the services only work on women.

These apps are part of a worrying trend of non-consensual pornography being developed and distributed because of advances in artificial intelligence — a type of fabricated media known as deepfake pornography. Its proliferation runs into serious legal and ethical hurdles, as the images are often taken from social media and distributed without the consent, control or knowledge of the subject.

  • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    It’s teaching kids to keep all of their photos private, like we always should have done from the beginning. Your face, your likeness, your privacy, there are malicious and greedy people out there that want what you have.

    Why did we ever start publicly sharing anything?

    • Boozilla@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      I feel the same way about biometrics. When I tell friends, family, and coworkers about this, they look at me like I’m crazy. You can change your password. You can’t change your retinal pattern, fingerprint, etc.

      And I don’t care how much someone tries to convince me on how securely it’s stored inside the phone hardware or the cloud. You are trusting every single coder and engineer who has a hand in designing and maintaining these things. Not to mention hackers who always find a way to breach.

      So far I’ve avoided using any of mine anywhere.

        • Boozilla@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          I think it’s only a matter of time, if it hasn’t happened already. When you scan your bio-metric data (fingerprint or whatever) it gets stored somewhere as a pattern of numbers. A clever and talented bad actor could, in theory, recreate or spoof that pattern of numbers in a variety of different ways. Hackers are very good at finding exploits that application coders never thought of. We have all sorts of virtual devices that emulate physical devices. It stands to reason that “virtual fingerprints” could easily be a thing.

          Also, bio-metrics are “super easy and convenient” which has a tendency to make people get a little too apathetic / casual about security. And by people I mean everyone involved from the user up through all the layers of engineers and testers to the C-suite.

          It’s an over-arching problem with security in general. Good security is both inconvenient and expensive. People want profits and convenience.

          I’m going to hold off on using my bio-metrics for as long as I can. Though I can imagine a future where that is no longer possible, unfortunately

    • NounsAndWords@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      I think even that is ultimately a lost cause. There are cameras everywhere and there’s getting to be more. Facebook is trying to get us all used to having cameras right on our face at all times. Even if you could completely block your face from every camera, how long until the AI equivalent of a police sketch artist just remakes your face from someone’s description?

      • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        The difference is the source. If someone pulls a screen grab of you from a Target security camera and uses AI to make porn, the employee has a problem because Target has a problem. If you take photos of yourself at the beach and share them via Facebook, then anyone anywhere can end up with that photo and use it for almost anything with no problem because you took it and shared it publicly.

        Hopefully this gets people to realize how much they are giving up by sharing via Facebook, and Instagram, and Xitter, and TicTac or whatever. If you want to be social media famous, be famous. But fame comes at a price.

      • FaceDeer@kbin.social
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        11 months ago

        I could easily imagine a simple brain/computer interface - not even requiring an implant, just one of those helmet or headband things - where you are looking at a screen while thinking about a person that you remember. The AI starts tweaking the image on the screen and monitoring how closely your brain is registering a “match” to the image you’re thinking of, until eventually it’s spot on.

        Won’t guarantee that you remembered perfectly, of course. But no camera required for something like this.

    • Meowoem@sh.itjust.works
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      11 months ago

      This is such a weird mentality and so bizarre that it’s common within a certain set of people. You’re going to hide in a darkened room refusing to interact with the world and not sharing anything because you’re scared someone will make an image of you?

      Oh gosh a greedy person stole my likeness because they wanted what I have! What ever will I do?!?!

      Your likeness isn’t special or magical, it’s not going to grant people special psychic power over you or allow someone else to claim your rewards in the afterlife, it’s just a picture in a sea of a billion pictures - so what?