The Biggest Deepfake Porn Website Is Now Blocked in the UK
Two of the biggest deepfake pornography websites have now started blocking people trying to access them from the United Kingdom. The move comes days after the UK government announced plans for a new law that will make creating nonconsensual deepfakes a criminal offense.
Nonconsensual deepfake pornography websites and apps that “strip” clothes off of photos have been growing at an alarming rate—causing untold harm to the thousands of women they are used to target. Clare McGlynn, a professor of law at Durham University, says the move is a “hugely significant moment” in the fight against deepfake abuse. “This ends the easy access and the normalization of deepfake sexual abuse material,” McGlynn tells WIRED.
Since deepfake technology first emerged in December 2017, it has consistently been used to create nonconsensual sexual images of women—swapping their faces into pornographic videos or allowing new “nude” images to be generated. As the technology has improved and become easier to access, hundreds of websites and apps have been created. Most recently, schoolchildren have been caught creating nudes of classmates.
