Will it be possible to eliminate the problem completely, or is all this just another half-measure?
Two years after Samantha Cole and Emanuel Mayberg, former journalists of Vice, discovered a number of artificial intelligence-based applications in the official Google Play store that can be used to create deepfake videos of pornographic content, Google finally removed one of these applications from its store, Mayberg reports already from-under the wing of 404 Media.
The publication does not disclose the specific name of the deleted application for good reasons: according to Mayberg, despite the removal of the application from Google Play, the web service on which it worked is still available on the Internet. The publication does not want to promote the app, and therefore decided not to disclose its name.
However, in a two-year-old article published on the Vice website, it was mainly about FaceMagic, a seemingly harmless application that was positioned on Google Play as a joke tool for sharing faces. However, FaceMagic was also advertised on several popular porn sites with the slogan "Make AI porn with any face in just a second".
The app itself did not block the creation of pornographic content in any way, despite the availability of such a technical feature. Conversely, judging by the fact that it was actively promoted on porn sites, such use was only encouraged by the authors.
Soon after the release of FaceMagic, the Internet was flooded with a lot of generated videos where the face of a real porn actress was realistically superimposed with the image of some famous American celebrity, like Scarlett Johansson, Anne Hathaway or Gal Gadot.
Now, almost two years after the discovery of inappropriate use of the app and hundreds of generated porn videos, Google has decided to block it.
In an email, a representative of the "corporation of good" said that access to the application was suspended for violating the Google Play application promotion policy, which prohibits applications that directly or indirectly engage in or benefit from deceptive or harmful promotion practices for users.
The editors of SecurityLab checked and found that the app with the name "FaceMagic: AI Videos & Photos" is currently available on Google Play, so in the original 404 Media material, we could talk either about a completely different application, or the application we discovered simply duplicates the name of the original FaceMagic.
In Google Play, according to the investigation, the deleted app had an age rating of " E "(for all ages) and had more than 10,000 downloads and more than 200 reviews. Most of these reviews were negative due to the fact that, while free to download, the app charged a fee for creating face-swapping videos.
Despite the fact that the creation and distribution of pornography in our country is prohibited in principle, the use of other people's images for this purpose without consent is completely unacceptable and immoral. This grossly violates the personal rights and privacy of the people whose faces are used in such videos.
Be that as it may, despite the removal of only one such application from Google Play, fans of generating 18+ deepfakes still have many options for such illegal frauds among both mobile applications and web services. The problem still remains relevant, and at the moment it is not clear whether it will ever be possible to eradicate this phenomenon completely.
Two years after Samantha Cole and Emanuel Mayberg, former journalists of Vice, discovered a number of artificial intelligence-based applications in the official Google Play store that can be used to create deepfake videos of pornographic content, Google finally removed one of these applications from its store, Mayberg reports already from-under the wing of 404 Media.
The publication does not disclose the specific name of the deleted application for good reasons: according to Mayberg, despite the removal of the application from Google Play, the web service on which it worked is still available on the Internet. The publication does not want to promote the app, and therefore decided not to disclose its name.
However, in a two-year-old article published on the Vice website, it was mainly about FaceMagic, a seemingly harmless application that was positioned on Google Play as a joke tool for sharing faces. However, FaceMagic was also advertised on several popular porn sites with the slogan "Make AI porn with any face in just a second".
The app itself did not block the creation of pornographic content in any way, despite the availability of such a technical feature. Conversely, judging by the fact that it was actively promoted on porn sites, such use was only encouraged by the authors.
Soon after the release of FaceMagic, the Internet was flooded with a lot of generated videos where the face of a real porn actress was realistically superimposed with the image of some famous American celebrity, like Scarlett Johansson, Anne Hathaway or Gal Gadot.
Now, almost two years after the discovery of inappropriate use of the app and hundreds of generated porn videos, Google has decided to block it.
In an email, a representative of the "corporation of good" said that access to the application was suspended for violating the Google Play application promotion policy, which prohibits applications that directly or indirectly engage in or benefit from deceptive or harmful promotion practices for users.
The editors of SecurityLab checked and found that the app with the name "FaceMagic: AI Videos & Photos" is currently available on Google Play, so in the original 404 Media material, we could talk either about a completely different application, or the application we discovered simply duplicates the name of the original FaceMagic.
In Google Play, according to the investigation, the deleted app had an age rating of " E "(for all ages) and had more than 10,000 downloads and more than 200 reviews. Most of these reviews were negative due to the fact that, while free to download, the app charged a fee for creating face-swapping videos.
Despite the fact that the creation and distribution of pornography in our country is prohibited in principle, the use of other people's images for this purpose without consent is completely unacceptable and immoral. This grossly violates the personal rights and privacy of the people whose faces are used in such videos.
Be that as it may, despite the removal of only one such application from Google Play, fans of generating 18+ deepfakes still have many options for such illegal frauds among both mobile applications and web services. The problem still remains relevant, and at the moment it is not clear whether it will ever be possible to eradicate this phenomenon completely.
