New York Seizes a Dozen Celebrity Deepfake Websites
New York Seizes a Dozen Celebrity Deepfake Websites
纽约查封十余家名人深度伪造（Deepfake）网站
For the best part of a decade, abusive deepfake “pornography” websites have published thousands of nonconsensual videos depicting women, including high-profile celebrities, politicians, and public figures, into sexual situations. Now, in what is likely the largest takedown of explicit deepfake websites to date, officials in New York have seized more than a dozen of the harmful sites. 在过去近十年的时间里，充满恶意的深度伪造（Deepfake）“色情”网站发布了数以千计未经当事人同意的视频，将包括知名名人、政治家和公众人物在内的女性置于性场景中。如今，纽约官员查封了十余家此类有害网站，这很可能是迄今为止针对露骨深度伪造网站规模最大的一次打击行动。
On Monday, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office announced the seizure of 12 domains which it says have been used for “unlawfully” sharing, publishing, and selling celebrity deepfake videos. Around 1,200 people—overwhelmingly women—were depicted in nonconsensual sexual images and videos on the websites, the office says. These included social media influencers, actors, activists, athletes, musicians, and politicians. 周一，曼哈顿地区检察官办公室宣布查封了12个域名，称这些域名被用于“非法”分享、发布和销售名人深度伪造视频。该办公室表示，这些网站上约有1200人（绝大多数为女性）出现在未经同意的性图像和视频中，其中包括社交媒体网红、演员、活动家、运动员、音乐家和政治家。
“These horrific violations of privacy follow victims into their careers and personal lives and take an immense toll on emotional and mental well-being,” district attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement, urging potential victims to come forward and contact his office’s cybercrime bureau. The office says its investigations into who is responsible for the websites, plus those who uploaded damaging videos of victims, are ongoing. 地区检察官阿尔文·布拉格（Alvin Bragg）在一份声明中表示：“这些可怕的隐私侵犯行为会跟随受害者进入她们的职业生涯和个人生活，并对她们的情绪和心理健康造成巨大伤害。”他敦促潜在受害者站出来，联系该办公室的网络犯罪部门。办公室表示，针对网站负责人以及上传受害者负面视频者的调查仍在进行中。
The seizures, carried out under New York’s criminal procedure laws, mark perhaps one of the most significant and sweeping actions against websites hosting explicit deepfake videos since the technology first emerged at the end of 2017. As artificial intelligence technology has improved, a dark industry of websites, apps, and bots has appeared: They are designed to “undress” photos of women or create graphic sexual videos that include them. The images and videos are increasingly realistic and can be generated in seconds. 此次查封行动依据纽约刑事诉讼法执行，标志着自2017年底深度伪造技术出现以来，针对托管露骨深度伪造视频网站最重大、最彻底的行动之一。随着人工智能技术的进步，一个由网站、应用程序和机器人组成的黑暗产业应运而生：它们旨在“脱掉”女性照片的衣服，或制作包含她们的露骨性视频。这些图像和视频正变得越来越逼真，且能在几秒钟内生成。
While deepfake technology is widely used against non-famous women and girls—often being shared in private social media groups—celebrities have spoken out about the many harms of being depicted in the content and the challenges of getting it removed. While laws against deepfakes have been slow to emerge, the US Take It Down Act increasingly allows images to be removed, with part of the law allowing law enforcement officials to take down and seize websites. 虽然深度伪造技术被广泛用于针对普通女性和女孩（通常在私人社交媒体群组中传播），但名人们也公开谈论了被此类内容描绘所带来的诸多伤害，以及删除这些内容的困难。尽管针对深度伪造的法律出台缓慢，但美国的《删除法案》（Take It Down Act）正越来越多地允许删除此类图像，该法案的部分内容还授权执法人员关闭并查封相关网站。
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has not publicly named the websites it has seized. However, ahead of Bragg’s announcement, WIRED independently observed several of the sites’ homepages being replaced by takedown notices—“THIS DOMAIN HAS BEEN SEIZED”—late last week, with the sites now saying they have been taken over following a seizure warrant issued by a New York State Supreme Court. 曼哈顿地区检察官办公室尚未公开被查封网站的名称。然而，在布拉格宣布消息之前，《连线》（WIRED）杂志独立观察到，上周晚些时候，其中几个网站的主页已被替换为查封通知——“此域名已被查封”。这些网站现在显示，它们是在纽约州最高法院签发查封令后被接管的。
“The takedowns are a significant win in the fight against synthetic nonconsensual intimate imagery (NCII),” says Leonie Oehmig, a researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), who has studied the deepfake creation ecosystem. Oehmig says that enforcement of state laws shows that the harmful content can be tackled and that the seized sites don’t appear to be accessible if using VPNs to try and access them from other locations. “This shows that meaningful, coordinated enforcement is achievable even where regulation itself remains fragmented across jurisdictions.” “此次查封是打击合成非自愿亲密图像（NCII）斗争中的一次重大胜利，”战略对话研究所（ISD）的研究员莱奥妮·奥米格（Leonie Oehmig）表示，她一直致力于研究深度伪造的创作生态系统。奥米格认为，州法律的执行表明有害内容是可以被治理的，而且即使使用VPN试图从其他地点访问，这些被查封的网站似乎也无法打开。“这表明，即使在监管本身在各司法管辖区仍然碎片化的情况下，有意义的、协调一致的执法也是可以实现的。”
The websites were likely viewed millions of times. Many used names that included phrases such as “sex celebrity” or promised “real deepfakes.” They hosted false videos of some of the world’s most famous celebrities, with one saying, “various actresses’ faces are used for deepfakes.” 这些网站的浏览量可能高达数百万次。许多网站使用的名称包含“性名人”等短语，或承诺提供“真实的深度伪造”。它们托管了一些世界上最著名名人的虚假视频，其中一个网站甚至声称“各种女演员的脸都被用于深度伪造”。
Videos could be several minutes in length and include fully sexually explicit scenes—often swapping the faces of celebrities or public figures into existing pornographic videos. Archived versions of the websites show some videos had been watched tens of thousands of times, with one of the websites claiming to have been online since 2018. 视频时长可达数分钟，并包含完全露骨的性场景——通常是将名人或公众人物的脸替换到现有的色情视频中。网站的存档版本显示，一些视频的观看次数已达数万次，其中一个网站声称自2018年以来一直在线。
“Most videos took the shape of actual pornographic movies, manipulated to instead show targets’ faces instead of the original actors,” says Benjamin Shultz, the lead researcher at the American Sunlight Project, a nonprofit. Shultz, who has been documenting deepfake abuse against political figures and had come across some of the websites during this research, says that many videos appeared to be reposts of content that had originally be shared on the MrDeepFakes website, a notorious deepfake platform that was taken offline after its creators were unmasked by reporters. “大多数视频的形式是真实的色情电影，经过篡改后，用目标人物的脸替换了原有的演员，”非营利组织“美国阳光计划”（American Sunlight Project）的首席研究员本杰明·舒尔茨（Benjamin Shultz）说。舒尔茨一直在记录针对政治人物的深度伪造滥用行为，并在研究过程中偶然发现了其中一些网站。他表示，许多视频似乎是最初在MrDeepFakes网站上分享的内容的转载，该网站是一个臭名昭著的深度伪造平台，在创作者被记者曝光后已被关闭。
“On at least two of the seized websites, elected officials were given profiles containing their name and position, along with a grid of manipulated videos hosting their likeness,” Shultz says. Through recent research, Shultz says that 56 European politicians had been mentioned or appeared on the websites, including 16 US politicians and two based in the UK. “在至少两个被查封的网站上，民选官员拥有个人资料，其中包含他们的姓名和职位，以及一个展示他们肖像的篡改视频网格，”舒尔茨说。通过最近的研究，舒尔茨表示，有56名欧洲政治家在这些网站上被提及或出现，其中包括16名美国政治家和两名英国政治家。
While Oehmig, the ISD researcher, says the takedowns are encouraging, there are many other parts of the deepfake industry that are causing serious harm. “Effective intervention needs to target the ecosystem at multiple points, including the tools used for the creation of synthetic NCII, the discovery and promotion of these, the hosting and technical infrastructure that keeps them online, and the payment and affiliate systems that enable operators to monetize them,” Oehmig says. 虽然ISD研究员奥米格认为此次查封令人鼓舞，但深度伪造行业中还有许多其他部分正在造成严重伤害。“有效的干预需要针对生态系统的多个环节，包括用于创建合成NCII的工具、这些内容的发现与推广、维持其在线的托管和技术基础设施，以及使运营商能够从中获利的支付和联盟系统，”奥米格说。