Revealed: the names linked to ClothOff, the deepfake pornography app

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

Revealed: the names linked to ClothOff, the deepfake pornography app

Exclusive: Guardian investigation for podcast series Black Box reveals names connected to app that generated nonconsensual images of underage girls around the world

Michael Safi and Alex Atack in Almendralejo, Spain, and Joshua Kelly in London
Thu 29 Feb 2024 19.28 GMT
Last modified on Thu 29 Feb 2024 22.05 GMT

-snip-

As Adib was learning of the pictures, thousands of miles away at the Westfield high school in New Jersey, a strikingly similar case was playing out: many girls targeted by explicit deepfake images generated by students in their classes. The New Jersey incident has prompted a civil lawsuit and helped fuel a bipartisan effort in the US Congress to ban the creation and spread of nonconsensual deepfake images.

At the centre of both the incidents in Spain and New Jersey was the same app, called ClothOff.

In the year since the app was launched, the people running ClothOff have carefully guarded their anonymity, digitally distorting their voices to answer media questions and, in one case, using AI to generate an entirely fake person who they claimed was their CEO.

But a six-month investigation, conducted for a new Guardian podcast series called Black Box, can reveal the names of several people who have done work for ClothOff or who our investigation suggests are linked to the app.

Their trail leads to Belarus and Russia but passes through businesses registered in Europe and front companies based in the heart of London.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/feb/29/clothoff-deepfake-ai-pornography-app-names-linked-revealed

[speak easy]

1. If your AI is open source

this is what you get = no guardrails.

[Layzeebeaver]

2. welcome to Britain post-brexit

no guardrails.

[multigraincracker]

3. Do laws on possession of child porn

apply? Years in jail and lifetime of rules on sex offenders.

[Eugene]

5. Such images may not be considered child porn *YET*. States like Washington are proposing new laws.

Not a lawyer, but "not real" images images of synthetic children
don't strictly count as child porn. Deepfake and AI porn makers
are exploiting this gray area.

[multigraincracker]

6. Change is the only thing that remains the same.

Must make it very hard to be a Conservative. How will those Originalist be able to deal with never before in history issues.

[Scrivener7]

4. Leads back to Russia. Shocked. Shocked, I tell you.

[Midnight Writer]

7. Release deep-fake pictures of men with tiny penises and see how long it takes for this to be outlawed.