Reddit Joins Other Site To Ban ‘DeepFake’ Involuntary Porn

Reddit has become the latest on-line platform to remove and ban high quality fake pornographic material from its website.

Reddit introduced its new rules banning the uploading, and sharing of what it referred to as involuntary pornography.  The site joins several other well known digital brands such as Twitter, Gyfcat and the world’s most visited adult website, Pornhub.com.

Deepfakes: The road to AI Hell is paved with good algorithms 

The so called rapid rise of “fake porn”, also known as “Deepfakes” refers to imagery and videos that use cutting-edge AI (Artificial Intelligence) algorithms to superimpose a subject’s face into an existing adult themes video or picture without their permission.

The nature of Reddit and its ‘front page of the Internet’ tag-line meant that the site was perhaps the most popular destination to discuss and share links on deepfake pictures and videos.

While the technology was not originally designed with the intention of using the head’s of movie stars and celebrities and splicing them into adult-related videos, the trend quickly took off. The AI software responsible however makes the process of generating realistic computer generated versions of celebrities faces, relatively simple.

Strong conviction, but still late to act

Reddit’s new policy announcement means that any content or link posted on any Reddit forum for the “specific purpose of faking explicit content or soliciting ‘lookalike’ pornography,” will be removed…

While the proliferation of Deepfake videos has so far mainly centered on celebrities, concerns have also been raised regarding the implications ‘involuntary porn’ may have in the controversial area of revenge porn.

Reddit had found itself under intense growing pressure in recent days to act after several other sites, including Twitter, and Pornhub began introducing new rules and Deepfake bans.

Pornhub, for instance has banned fake celebrity porn entirely. “We do not tolerate any non-consensual content on the site and we remove all said content as soon as we are made aware of it,” a spokesperson said. “Non-consensual content directly violates our TOS [terms of service] and consists of content such as revenge porn, deepfakes or anything published without a person’s consent or permission”.