Generative AI and “nudify” apps

Matt Burgess, from Wired.com (on arstechnica):

Major technology companies, including Google, Apple, and Discord, have been enabling people to quickly sign up to harmful “undress” websites, which use AI to remove clothes from real photos to make victims appear to be “nude” without their consent. More than a dozen of these deepfake websites have been using login buttons from the tech companies for months.

A WIRED analysis found 16 of the biggest so-called undress and “nudify” websites using the sign-in infrastructure from Google, Apple, Discord, Twitter, Patreon, and Line. This approach allows people to easily create accounts on the deepfake websites—offering them a veneer of credibility—before they pay for credits and generate images.

While bots and websites that create nonconsensual intimate images of women and girls have existed for years, the number has increased with the introduction of generative AI. This kind of “undress” abuse is alarmingly widespread, with teenage boys allegedly creating images of their classmates. Tech companies have been slow to deal with the scale of the issues, critics say, with the websites appearing highly in search results, paid advertisements promoting them on social media, and apps showing up in app stores.

This is another reason why women and girls in general, shouldn’t post their photos online. The fitna is already there even if the photos aren’t sexualized, but this is a whole other level of just destroying a girls reputation. 

Imagine if this became rampant in the Muslim community? It would just be a huge mess, with families’ reputations being tarnished and girls being slandered against left and right. Imagine a high school or middle school boy liking a muslim girl in school, and trying this feature on her. She may not even be one who posts photos online and might not even be involved in social media, but anyone can just take your photo these days and do whatever they want with it. 

This is a continuation of a trend that normalizes sexual violence against women and girls by Big Tech,” says Adam Dodge, a lawyer and founder of EndTAB (Ending Technology-Enabled Abuse). “Sign-in APIs are tools of convenience. We should never be making sexual violence an act of convenience,” he says. “We should be putting up walls around the access to these apps, and instead we're giving people a drawbridge.

Putting up walls around access to the apps might stop a few people, but those who really want to nudify someone will find a way to nudify them. 

Muslim parents should take heed and address these issues with their children, especially if they have cell phones and are on social media.