“When we look at the abuse of intimate images, most of the tools and weapons used come from the open source space,” Azdar said. But they often start with well-heeled developers, he says. “Some make something they think is interesting or cool, and some with bad intentions recognize its malicious potential and weaponize it.”
Some, such as August Disabled Repositories, have purpose-built communities around them for explicit use. The model positioned itself as a tool for deepfake porn, Azdar claims, becoming a “funnel” of abuse, mainly targeting women.
Other videos have been uploaded on porn-streaming sites An account credited to AI models downloaded from GitHub featured the faces of popular deepfake targets, celebrities Emma Watson, Taylor Swift and Anya Taylor-Joy, as well as other less famous but very real women, superimposed on sexual situations.
The creators freely describe the tools they use, two of which have been scrubbed by GitHub but whose code persists in other existing repositories.
Deepfake perpetrators congregate in many places online, including secret community forums on Discord and in plain sight on Reddit, making efforts to combat deepfakes more complicated. A redditor offered their services using the archive’s software on September 29 “Can someone do my cousin,” asked another
Torrents of major repositories banned by GitHub in August are also available in other corners of the web, showing how tough it is to police. Open source deepfake software Other deepfake porn tools across the board, such as the app Deepnewed The same is taken down Before the new version pops up.
“There are so many models, so many different forks in the models, so many different versions, it can be hard to keep track of them all,” says Elizabeth Seger, director of digital policy at the cross-party UK think tank Demos. “Once a model is made open source publicly available for download, its public There is no way to rollback,” he added.
A deepfake porn creator has marketed a prominent GitHub repository with manipulated explicit videos of 13 female celebrities as a “NSFW” version of another project that encourages responsible use and explicitly asks users not to use it for nudity. “Learn all available Face Swap AI from GitHUB, without using online services,” says their profile on the Tube site unabashedly.
GitHub had already disabled this NSFW version when WIRED detected the deepfake video However, other collections 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 more difficult for people to access,” Seger said.
If left unchecked, he adds, the damage potential of deepfake “porn” isn’t just psychological. Its knock-on effects include intimidation and manipulation of women, minorities and politicians, as seen in Political deepfakes Influences women politicians worldwide.
But it’s never too late to get the problem under control, and platforms like GitHub have options, Seger said, including interfering with upload times. “If you put a model on GitHub and don’t say GitHub, and don’t say all hosting platforms, it becomes difficult for a normal person to get that model.”
It’s up to policymakers, tech companies, developers and, of course, creators of offensive content to rein in deepfake porn created with an open source model.
According to the nonprofit Public Citizen, at least 30 U.S. states have some laws against deepfake porn, including bans. Act TrackerDefinitions and policies differ, however, and some laws only cover minors Deepfake makers in the UK will also soon feel the force of the law following the government’s announcement Criminalizing the making of sexually explicit deepfakesAs well as sharing them, 7 January.
