A powerful new deepfake tool has digitally undressed thousands of women

A Powerful New Deepfake Tool Has Digitally Undressed Thousands Of Women

The website promises to make “men’s dreams come true.” Users upload a photo of a fully clothed woman of their choice, and in seconds, the site undresses them for free. With that one feature, it has exploded into one of the most popular “deepfake” tools ever created.

Far more advanced than the now-defunct “DeepNude” app that went viral in 2019, this new site has amassed more than 38 million hits since the start of this year, and has become an open secret in misogynist corners of the web. (HuffPost is not naming the site in order to avoid directing further traffic to it.) It went offline briefly Monday after HuffPost reached out to its original web host provider, IP Volume Inc., which quickly terminated its hosting services. But the site was back up less than a day later with a new host — as is often the case with abusive websites.

Launched in 2020, the site boasts that it developed its own “state of the art” deep-learning image translation algorithms to “nudify” female bodies, and that the technology is so powerful there is not a woman in the world, regardless of race or nationality, who is safe from being “nudified.” But it doesn’t work on men. When fed a photo of a cisgender man’s clothed body, the site gave him breasts and a vulva.

With female and female-presenting subjects, on the other hand, the results are strikingly realistic, often bearing no glitches or visual clues that the photos are deepfakes ― that is, synthetically manipulated imagery. This drastically increases the potential for harm. Any vindictive creep, for example, could easily “nudify” and post photos of his ex online to make it seem, very convincingly, as if her actual nudes had been leaked. “Holy mother [of] god,” one user raved about the tool’s “amazing” abilities in an online forum where men consume and discuss deepfake porn. “Ive never seen [results like this] before ... the future is now.”

The website’s stunning success lays bare the grim and increasingly dangerous reality of being a woman on the internet as malicious deepfake technology continues to advance undeterred. Women were already being digitally inserted into porn and stripped naked against their will via similar, less powerful deepfake tools. But the problem is spiraling out of control, with the technology becoming ever more accessible and the imagery becoming ever more believable.

Afghan Women Brace For Taliban Regime

Following a blitz across Afghanistan that saw many cities fall to the insurgents without a fight, the Taliban have sought to portray themselves as more moderate than when they last ruled. Earlier, Enamullah Samangani, a member of the Taliban’s cultural commission, promised amnesty and encouraged women to join the government. But many Afghans remain skeptical. Older generations remember the Taliban’s ultraconservative Islamic views, which included severe restrictions on women as well as public stonings and amputations before they were ousted by the U.S-led invasion following the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Instagram Sleuths Do It Again

When former President Donald Trump sent a tweet early this year promoting Jan. 6 as a “Historic day,” a conspiracy-minded former bodybuilder from Michigan let the president know he had his back. “I’ll be there,” Logan Barnhart replied to @realDonaldTrump on Twitter. Now, seven months after the man online sleuths dubbed #CatSweat was photographed dragging a police officer down a set of stairs during the attack on the U.S. Capitol, the Michigan man has been arrested by the FBI. An official confirmed the arrest to HuffPost Tuesday morning.

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