Over 250 British celebrities fell victim to deepfake porn

More than 250 British celebrities have fallen victim to deepfake porn, a new investigation has revealed.

Among them is news host Cathy Newman, who said she felt violated while watching digitally altered videos in which her face was superimposed over pornographic content using artificial intelligence (AI).

Channel 4 aired the findings on Thursday night and said an analysis of the five most visited deepfake websites found that 255 of the nearly 4,000 celebrities listed were British, with all but two of them British. for women.

Newman watched the deepfake video of himself in the report and said: “It felt like a violation.

“It feels really sinister that someone has put this together and I can’t see them, but they can see this imaginary version of me, this fake version of me.

“You can’t ignore that. It’s something I’ll keep coming back to.

“The thought of thousands of women being manipulated in this way feels absolutely deeply intrusive and violating.

“It’s really disturbing that you can find these things with the click of a button and how easily people can create this grotesque imitation of reality.”

Channel 4 News said it contacted more than 40 celebrities to investigate, but none of them would comment publicly.

The broadcaster also said it found that more than 70% of visitors to deepfake websites use search engines such as Google.

Advances in artificial intelligence have made it easier to create fake images that have been digitally altered.

Industry experts have warned of the dangers posed by AI-generated deepfakes and their potential to spread misinformation, especially in a year when major elections are scheduled to take place in many countries, including the UK and the US.

Earlier this year, deepfake images of pop star Taylor Swift were posted to X, formerly Twitter, after fans lobbied the Elon Musk-owned platform to take action. The platform blocked searches related to the singer.

The Cybersecurity Law makes it a criminal offense to share or threaten to share intimate images or videos created or deepfake by others without their consent, but it is not intended to criminalize the creation of such deepfake content.

Channel 4 News claimed in its investigation that the biggest target group for deepfake porn is women who are not in the public eye.

Newman spoke to Sophie Parish, who launched the petition before the law was changed after the person who produced her digitally altered porn was detained by police but did not face any further legal action.

In January, she told the PA news agency that an unidentified user sent her Facebook messages that included a video showing a man masturbating on top of her and pleasuring himself with her shoes.

“I felt very, and still do, dirty – that’s one of the only ways I can describe it – and I was very ashamed that these images existed,” she said.

Conservative MP Caroline Nokes, chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, told Channel 4 News: “It’s horrific… women are being targeted.

“We need to protect people from deepfake images like this that can destroy lives.”

In a statement to the news channel, a Google spokesperson said: “We understand how distressing this content can be and we are committed to strengthening existing protections to help those affected.

“Per our policies, people can have pages containing this content and including their likeness removed from searches.

“While this is a technical challenge for search engines, we are actively developing additional protections for Google Search, including tools to help people protect themselves at scale, as well as ranking improvements that broadly address this content.”

“Meta strictly prohibits child nudity, child sexualization content, and services that provide artificial intelligence-generated images of non-consensual nudity,” Meta’s Ryan Daniels said in a statement to the broadcaster.