A user on China‘s popular social media website Weibo claims that he has developed an algorithm that can match the faces of porn actors with their social media profiles.
As reported by Vice, the user who purports to be living in Germany said his software has ‘successfully identified more than 100,000 young ladies’ which he then used to create a searchable database.
In a Twitter post which has since gone viral, a PhD student at Stanford details the users claims in a post.
People have crawled porn sites in the past in an effort to harass and blockade the financial transactions of sex workers on the internet.
According to the man, the project took about half of a year and was conducted by using an algorithm to crawl popular porn sites like PornHub, XVideos, and sex8 and then comparing the data against images on Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, Weibo, and more.
In all, the user said the project combed through more than 100 terabytes of data.
While the report has gained steam on social media, the database, methods, or indeed any proof of the projects existence has yet to be made public, but according to Motherboard, creators plan to make ‘database schema’ and ‘technical details’ available soon.
Since the alleged database has garnered attention from users on Twitter and more, many have openly criticized the intention behind such a resource.
While Vice reports that the creator and his friends intended for the tool to be used by men who are engaged to women that they suspect of being featured in porn on the internet, or what he calls the ‘right to know on both sides of the marriage,’ he has since rolled back some of those claims.
In subsequent statements, he claims that the platform is to be used by women who suspect that explicit videos of them have been uploaded to the internet without their consent.
The claim has sparked concern among some who say the database will be misued to harrass women and out those who may appear in porn on the internet unwittingly
The claim, whether founded or not, has caught the attention of critics who point out that the possibility of a public database that can match performers, or even those who appear in pornographic videos online without their consent, raises several ethical and moral concerns.
One Weibo user says he has created a database that can match porn actors with their social media profiles.
Feasibly, say critics, such a database could be used to expose sex workers and aid those who would seek to harass or extort them.
Last year, a group seeking to blockade sex work compiled a massive database of workers which they then used to report their activities to PayPal and other payment services.
Some users also used the information, which was made in part by scraping sex cam sites like Chaturbate to harass and intimidate sex workers, leading one crusader to tell Wired that he wanted to ‘exterminate’ sex workers and that they should face the death penalty.
Though the existence of the Weibo user’s database is dubious, popular porn streaming site, Pornhub has been actively employing the use of facial recognition software to catalog performers on it site.
It says the tool could be used to help viewers identify their favorite actors and help personalize the site’s experience, but critics have derided the measure for similar reasons to the recent alleged database.
In particular, skeptics say the program could end up grouping together subjects who appear on the site unwittingly.
‘If the capability was applied to (genuinely) non-professional content, the possibility for harm is considerably higher,’ Neil Brown, a lawyer specializing in technology and internet law, told Vice last year.
‘This would be particularly true if it attempts were made to include identifiers from other sources, such as shared photographs on social networking sites.’
WHY IS FAKE CELEBRITY PORN MADE BY AN AI SO CONCERNING?
Back in December, it was discovered that Reddit users were creating fake pornography using celebrity faces pasted on to adult film actresses’ bodies.
The disturbing videos, created by Reddit user deepfakes, look strikingly real as a result of a sophisticated machine learning algorithm, which uses photographs to create human masks that are then overlaid on top of adult film footage.
Now, AI-assisted porn is spreading all over Reddit, thanks to an easy-to-use app that can be downloaded directly to your desktop computer, according to Motherboard.
The video, created by Reddit user deepfakes, features a woman who takes on the rough likeness of Gadot, with the actor’s face overlaid on another person’s head. A clip from the video is shown
To create the likeness of Gal Gadot, for example, the algorithm was trained on real porn videos and images of actor, allowing it to create an approximation of the actor’s face that can be applied to the moving figure in the video.
As all of this is freely available information, it could be done without that person’s consent.
And, as Motherboard notes, people today are constantly uploading photos of themselves to various social media platforms, meaning someone could use such a technique to harass someone they know.
