Virginia Becomes First State To Officially Outlaw Deepfake Porn

CYBERSPACE—When AVN.com first reported on “deepfake porn” in 2017, the then-new phenomenon was confined to Reddit groups where a few users created and posted fake porn videos created by superimposing a celebrity’s face into an existing porn clip. By using an artificial intelligence algorithm, the celebrity faces could be made to change expression with some degree of realism, creating a believable illusion that the celebs were actually take part in hardcore sex scenes. But in the year and a half since, deepfakes have branched out into the world of politics, with even President Barack Obama finding himself the unwitting star of a video in which—thanks to director and comedian Jordan Peele—he issues such un-Obama-like utterances as, “President Trump is total and complete dipshit,” and “Stay woke, bitches.” But while the Obama video was intended as a humorous warning about the destructive potential of deepfake technology, the potential to use the technology for deceptive political propaganda is clearly disturbing. On the porn side of the deepfake issue, recent technological advances have made producing the phony porn much easier than even 18 months ago. As AVN.com reported, a new AI development from the tech firm Samsung has now made it possible to fabricate a realistic deepfake video from a single facial image of anyone, downloaded from social media. In response to the rise of deepfakes, one state—Virginia—has now made deepfake videos, or still images, illegal, according to a report by Ars Technica. The bill is actually an update to a 2014 Virginia law criminalizing “revenge porn,” that is, nude or sexually explicit images of a person posted online without that person’s consent. Under the updated law, any “falsely created videographic or still image" would also now be banned in Virginia, under the law which took effect on July 1. Federal legislation to ban deepfakes is also in the works, with New York Democrat Yvette Clarke introducing a House bill last month that would ban deepfake videos and images that are distributed "with the intent to humiliate or otherwise harass the person falsely exhibited.” In the meantime, the technology continues to advance. As AVN.com reported earlier this week, the maker of an app known as DeepNude—which was designed to alter any photo of a clothed woman to make her appear fully nude—shut down distribution of the app after an online backlash.  But according to The Verge, copies of the DeepNude app remain available for download online from various unauthorized sources. Photo By Abyssus / Wikimedia Commons