AI 'Nudify' Websites Are Raking in Millions of Dollars [View all]

[WhiskeyGrinder]

https://www.wired.com/story/ai-nudify-websites-are-raking-in-millions-of-dollars/

archive link: https://archive.ph/4YUng

For years, so-called “nudify” apps and websites have mushroomed online, allowing people to create nonconsensual and abusive images of women and girls, including child sexual abuse material. Despite some lawmakers and tech companies taking steps to limit the harmful services, every month, millions of people are still accessing the websites, and the sites’ creators may be making millions of dollars each year, new research suggests.

An analysis of 85 nudify and “undress” websites—which allow people to upload photos and use AI to generate “nude” pictures of the subjects with just a few clicks—has found that most of the sites rely on tech services from Google, Amazon, and Cloudflare to operate and stay online. The findings, revealed by Indicator, a publication investigating digital deception, say that the websites had a combined average of 18.5 million visitors for each of the past six months and collectively may be making up to $36 million per year.

Alexios Mantzarlis, a cofounder of Indicator and an online safety researcher, says the murky nudifier ecosystem has become a “lucrative business” that “Silicon Valley’s laissez-faire approach to generative AI” has allowed to persist. “They should have ceased providing any and all services to AI nudifiers when it was clear that their only use case was sexual harassment,” Mantzarlis says of tech companies. It is increasingly becoming illegal to create or share explicit deepfakes.

According to the research, Amazon and Cloudflare provide hosting or content delivery services for 62 of the 85 websites, while Google’s sign-on system has been used on 54 of the websites. The nudify websites also use a host of other services, such as payment systems, provided by mainstream companies.