Deepfake Pornography

Our friends at ProtectYoungMinds.org recently ran a story on some of the sneaky ways that pornography targets kids in today’s online world. One strategy is the use of deepfake technology. Deepfakes are photo manipulations where a person in an existing real photo or video is merged with someone else’s likeness. For example, deepfake technology through the simple use of an online app could take a typical school photo of a child who is fully dressed, and then manipulate that image to remove clothing, replace faces, on put one’s head on another’s body in a manner that is difficult to detect. Deepfakes are often times used to create pornography, and the manipulations are almost indistinguishable from reality. Any photo can be used to create pornography which is automatically added to an online gallery and shared. It is recommended that parents check the social media privacy settings so that photos of your children cannot be harvested for this purpose.