These Nudes Do Not Exist deepfake porn sales

Occurred: March 2020

Can you improve this page?
Share your insights with us

Start-up These Nudes Do Not Exist is selling AI-generated images of women who do not exist in real-life for USD 1 in an attempt to upend the deepfake nude industry, drawing criticism for inappropriatw commercialisation and shoddy ethics.

These Nudes Do Not Exist takes public domain photographs and uses an algorithm to generate composite nude images of women who do not exist in real-life. But whilst the company technically does not violate the privacy of real women, the company refuses to reveal the sources of their training data, raising questions about whether the consent of those whose photographs were initially used had given their consent. 

One of the co-founders told Vice, 'I think this is probably the first chance that anyone in the world has ever had to buy AI generated pornographic content, so in a sense each customer gets to be a part of porn and AI history.' The founders also 'requested to remain anonymous because he and his partner didn't want to be publicly associated with their own creation,' according to Vice.

The website was taken down shortly after its launch.

Operator: Unclear/unknown
Developer: Anonymous/pseudonymous

Country: Russia

Sector: Media/entertainment/sports/arts

Purpose: Generate nude images

Technology: Deepfake - image; Generative adversarial network (GAN); Neural network; Deep learning; Machine learning
Issue: Safety; Ethics

Transparency: Governance; Complaints/appeals; Privacy; Marketing