Hollywood gears up against deepfakes, the non-consensual AI-powered celebrity porn and might work on legislative fix

In 2017, Hollywood came a long way with its #MeToo and #TimesUp movement to speak against sexual harassment in the American film industry. Now, it is again gearing up pro-actively against portals which host non-consensual celebrity pornography , popularly known as deepfakes.  [caption id=“attachment_4216757” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Gal Gadot’s face was swapped non-consensually with the person in a pornographic video.[/caption] According to a Deadline report, SAG-AFTRA which represents the collegium of actors and those related to Hollywood is reviewing such material and is undertaking legislative options to fight against those who use face-swapping technologies without consent to defame their members such as actors, singers, announcers. Since there is no such legislation available currently to prevent this, the body will work to bring such a legislation to the forefront. The unauthorised use of the images with the help of artificial intelligence came to light late in December 2017, when Motherboard had reported that Gal Gadot’s face had been imposed in a pornographic video with the help of artificial intelligence. It was circulating via a subreddit called ‘deepfakes’ on Reddit. This was followed by a string of investigations where Discord and PornHub were found to be hosting videos where images of celebrity actors were swapped. (Also Read:  Inside the problematic world of 'deepfakes', AI-made videos which morph celebrities' faces on porn star s ) Since it was non-consensual in nature, PornHub, Discord and Reddit decided to remove non-consensual content. However, according to a report on Mashable, PornHub was found hosting such videos again. Even though artificial intelligence has become popular in face-swapping technology in social media platforms, it has indeed led to a flood of non-consensual content which leads to defamation of these celebrity figures.