Fox News Digital reported that Etsy — an online retailer that provides a platform for those who make and sell handmade and vintage products — has been selling “deepfake” pornographic images of celebrities and other women. The revelation comes after Etsy claimed that it was trying to clean up its site.
Experts are baffled about how sexually explicit images generated by AI could crop up on a harmless website such as Etsy. Siwei Lyu — a computer scientist and expert on machine learning — said the website is a “total innocuous platform for people to do this. Usually we find a lot of explicit content on Twitter, or some other particular portals for that kind of materials.”
“But polluting the space on such a platform [like Etsy] is quite hard to believe.”
The report noted that a simple search of “ai nude” or “deepfake porn” on Etsy turned up more than 1,000 results. While not all the results yielded pornographic content, many of the nude images that did show up were entirely fabricated women created by artificial intelligence.
There was even one shop on Etsy that sold an e-book on how to create X-rated AI content, according to the report.
Forbes reported last year that a consumer could purchase Olivia Munn t-shirts and mugs, and until recently, people could also purchase AI-generated deepfake digital images of her — some of which were pornographic.
“With a resolution of 300 DPI, Olivia’s details come to life, making it ideal for digital art, design, and printing. Olivia celebrates the elegance of the female form in a tasteful and artistic manner, making it suitable for a variety of creative applications,” one description said, offering a single image for just $2.49.
Munn’s attorney, Bryan Sullivan, said that Munn felt “violated and offended” at the realization that such products were made available.
“This is outrageous and a violation of my client’s rights, and more importantly, her dignity,” Sullivan said. “We will be taking action to remove this and prevent this from happening again. And I’ve already started that process with Etsy.”
While Sullivan said he immediately reached out to Etsy about the explicit material offered on their site, he said they did not take it down until almost a week later.
Fox News Digital reported that since AI technology has been available to anyone with a computer, it is going to be more difficult for laws to catch up to potentially illegal activity.
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