American Teens Struggle Against Deepfake Porn

 Teenage girls in the US are under threat.

According to a report, they are increasingly being targeted with AI-generated fake nude photos.

This already  happened in New Jersey and Washington state where different girls are said to have been featured in illicit adult content. It is created using stable diffusion and “face-swap” tools and can also be surprisingly realistic.

“I didn’t know how complex and scary AI technology is,” said Francesca Mani, 15, a sophomore at New Jersey’s Westfield High School. Over 30 girls learned on Oct. 20 that they may have been depicted in explicit, AI-manipulated images.

The culprits who created them likely included the girls’ classmates. One of the victims admitted that she was “shocked because me and the other girls were betrayed by our classmates, which means it could happen to anyone by anyone.”

However, this is just the tip of the iceberg, with the FBI warning back in June that technology was improving and being used for harassment and sextortion. 

While the police are investigating several cases at the moment, they also admit that there’s almost no way of seeking accountability or recourse. Foremost due to the lack of appropriate legislation.

New Jersey State Sen. Jon Bramnick confirmed this, stating that state laws currently fall short of punishing the content creators, even though the damage inflicted by real or manipulated images may be equal.

“It victimizes them the same way people who deal in child pornography do. It’s not only offensive to the young person, it defames the person. And you never know what’s going to happen to that photograph,” he said. “You don’t know where that is once it’s transmitted, when it’s going to come back and haunt the young girl.”

To address the situation, there is a state bill pending in New Jersey. It would ban  deepfake pornography and impose criminal and civil penalties for nonconsensual disclosure. If convicted, the person who creates it would face three to five years in jail and/or a $15,000 fine, he said.

If it receives the green light from lawmakers,  New Jersey would join at least 10 other states that have enacted legislation targeting deepfakes.

The federal bill is still in the making, with Francesca and her mother eyeing a trip to Washington, D.C.in December to personally urge Congress members to act.