Celebrities
Becca Monaghan
Mar 30, 2023
content.jwplatform.com
A vile new revelation has outed a "predatory" deepfake porn website that hails Emma Watson and Scarlett Johansson depictions as its top 'models'.
In a deep-dive report for NBC News, it was noted that a horrifying 96 per cent of deepfakes are sexually explicit and created without the consent of the person featured.
Noelle Martin, lawyer and legal advocate, said the MrDeepFakes site is "not a porn site," instead calling it "predatory."
"[It] doesn’t rely on the consent of the people on the actual website," Martin told NBC. "The fact that it’s even allowed to operate and is known is a complete indictment of every regulator in the space, of all law enforcement, of the entire system, that this is even allowed to exist."
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The horrifying site features deepfake celebrities participating in NSFW acts – without their consent.
It comes after Harry Potter star Watson was spotted in an ad for a face-swap app, posing suggestively. Journalism student Lauren Barton brought attention to the post on Twitter, writing "I got this ad yesterday and wow what the hell."
"This could be used with high schoolers in public schools who are bullied," Lauren said. "It could ruin somebody’s life. They could get in trouble at their job. And this is extremely easy to do and free. All I had to do was upload a picture of my face and I had access to 50 free templates."
Deepfake porn currently exists in a legal grey area – particularly when high-profile figures are involved.
Worryingly, they're not entirely illegal.
Cybersecurity expert and What the Hack podcast host Adam Levin toldIndy100 that "as long as every party involved is a legal adult, there aren’t very many laws on the books to prevent or punish the distribution of illicit content."
He claimed, "it’s nearly impossible to remove any content published online, pornographic or otherwise," before adding: "That said, if all the parties are known, there may be legally actionable kinds of deepfake porn content."
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