After their rapid onslaught on the web, Reddit has officially decided to ban a subreddit called "deepfakes," which is devoted to sharing and distributing artificial intelligence-generated pornopgraphy featuring celebrity's faces.
In a post on Feb. 7, Reddit laid down updates to its existing rules on publishing sexual content featuring a person without their consent. The new policy extended a ban on posting photos or videos of people who are nude or participating in sexual practices without their permission, saying that this now also includes AI-aided celebrity porn content that has become widely popular in recent weeks not just on Reddit, but on Pornhub, Twitter, and several other sites as well.
Reddits Shuts Down Deepfakes
"Do not post images or video of another person for the specific purpose of faking explicit content or soliciting 'lookalike' pornography," the new policy explicitly states.
However, the new policy does not affect other more benign face-swapping content on Reddit, or ones which are not pornographic in nature. However, Reddit still has a lot of work to do if it aims to sweep its site off sophisticated fake celebrity nudes or porn. The Verge reports that there's still a subreddit posting simulated porn for a specific actor that seems to have bypassed the new policy and remained active.
In the future, Reddit will depend of user-submitted reports to properly identify and promptly shut down subreddits and communities that still share deepfakes content.
"First-party reports are always the best way for us to tell," Reddit said. "For other situations, we take them on a case-by-case basis and take context into account."
Fake Celebrity Porn Made With Artificial Intelligence
The deepfakes subreddit was established after a December 2017 report by Motherboard pointed to the existence of fake AI-created celebrity porn videos, in which the faces of popular actors would be superimposed on a real adult performer's face to make it seem as if they're the ones who are engaging in various sexual intercourses.
The videos are made with the aid of machine learning technology, the report explains, together with easily accessible materials and open-source code anyone with working knowledge of deep learning algorithms could put together.
Reddit is the most recent site to ban such content, following similar moves by Gfycat, Discord, and Pornhub.
Thoughts on fake celebrity porn? Do you think Reddit made a great decision by banning these types of content from its site altogether? As always, if you have anything to share, feel free to sound them off in the comments section below!
