What is Deepsukebe? AI tool that generates deepfake nudes of women gets 5M hits in June
A website that employs machine learning to turn ordinary images of women into lifelike deepfake nudes is generating shouts of outrage and millions of page views, news outlets reported on Wednesday, August 12.
According to experts in the forensic analysis of digital images, deepfake is a technology with which one can create highly convincing fake videos using AI technology. The graphics are so realistic that some recent videos uploaded on TikTok by an account name DeepTomCruise had many wondering if the 'Mission Impossible' actor really had joined the social networking platform.
READ MORE
One can only imagine the damage that deepfake AI technology could cause to political figures or the danger it poses to the safety of women and children. These cybersecurity concerns were at the helm of Wednesday's news. According to BBC News, the year-old site has received more than 38 million hits since its launch in January 2021, with five million in June alone.
The BBC recognized the website as Deepsukebe, citing material on the site declaring its objective is to "make all men's dreams come true." HuffPost declined to name the website, but the BBC identified it as Deepsukebe.
TRIGGER WARNING: SICKENING CONTENT.
— the egalitarian. (@_theegalitarian) August 4, 2021
Have you heard about DeepSukebe? They are a website that uses an “AI-Leveraged Nudifier” to nudify photographs of women.#picture#online#objectification #parliament #metoo pic.twitter.com/ejB5DzCFux
What is Deepsukebe?
Deepsukebe described itself as an 'AI-leveraged nudifier' on its now-defunct Twitter feed. It claims that the phony photographs it creates are not saved, but it does have an 'incentive programme' that compensates people who share links to their deepfakes. Users that receive enough clicks on their images can 'nudify' more images faster, the Daily Mail reported. Users can also pay a monthly fee in cryptocurrency to get around the two-hour photo limit.
Upon opening its website, Deepsukebe's privacy policy popup message states: "Your uploaded picture will be automatically deleted from our server. You can choose to delete your picture instantly after nudification." The website states that one can "nudify everything". "Bikinis, Dresses, Coats and More! Accurate Color, Size, and Shape! Cover Diverse People," it specifies. It adds that the pictures are processed at a "lightning fast speed" of under 15 seconds. It adds that the users can be completely anonymous, not having to sign up for the website in any capacity.
However, it does have a pricing plan based on API quota. One API is for $0.15, 100 for $9.99 and 500 APIs for $39.99. Application programming interfaces, or APIs, simplify software development and innovation by enabling applications to exchange data and functionality easily and securely. API quotas usually describe a certain amount of calls for longer intervals. In free mode, one can get only limited downloads every few hours. The website states that it currently supports only cryptocurrencies as a payment method.
Describing their app, the website states "revealing truth hidden under clothing." It adds: "More powerful in that covering diverse clothing and womens [sic]. This has been achieved by building state of the art AI model [sic]." It adds, under three pointers, that the company "especially required" "millions of data, years of research", and "months of AI model training". Ominously, it added: "So DeepSukebe was born by burning huge time & money. [sic] At last, the dream that humans have long desired came true." The app is "available on all devices - Desktop/Tablet/Android/iOS." The company's logo is a star with an eye in the middle, with the slogan, "We seek truth, we strip fakes, we deny lies."
Who owns Deepsukebe?
"It's unknown who is behind the site, which is riddled with spelling and syntax errors, just as it's unclear where they are based," wrote HuffPost tech reporter Jesselyn Cook. "Last month, the U.S. was by far the site's leading source of traffic, followed by Thailand, Taiwan, Germany and China. Now-deleted Medium posts demonstrating how to use the site featured before-and-after pictures of Asian women exclusively."
On Monday, the DeepSukebe website was down temporarily when HuffPost contacted its host provider, IP Volume Inc, it was rated as a "possible high fraud risk ISP" by Scamalytics, an anti-fraud firm utilized by many online dating sites. According to the research, they have 14,643 IP addresses, almost all of which are used to run servers, anonymizing VPNs, and public proxies.
Deepfake porn videos used to be mostly centered on female celebrities, as there had to be a significant amount of available footage of the person to smoothly integrate them into a scenario. Deepfake porn stills may now be created using only a single photograph of any female. (Men's sex organs are replaced with female sex organs.)
While fake celebrity nudes are prevalent, Deepfake expert Henry Ajde told HuffPost that "the vast majority of people using these [tools] want to target people they know." And the crisis is only getting worse: Since 2018, the amount of deepfake videos has doubled every six months, according to Sensity AI, a deepfake research firm.
"This is a violence-against-women issue," Adam Dodge, founder of EndTAB said to Technology Review in February. "What a perfect tool for somebody seeking to exert power and control over a victim." EndTAB is a nonprofit that educates people about technology-enabled abuse.
Actress Scarlett Johansson, who has herself been the target of deepfake pornography that has been viewed millions of times, has suggested that pursuing offenders is pointless. "I think it's a useless pursuit, legally, mostly because the internet is a vast wormhole of darkness that eats itself," she told The Washington Post in 2018. "Obviously, if a person has more resources, they may employ various forces to build a bigger wall around their digital identity. But nothing can stop someone from cutting and pasting my image or anyone else's onto a different body and making it look as eerily realistic as desired. There are basically no rules on the internet because it is an abyss that remains virtually lawless."