Online marketplace Etsy has a problem with celebrity porn

On the online marketplace Etsy, customers can buy AI-generated images depicting celebrities in a pornographic manner – so-called deepfakes. As the American magazine Forbes reports, even the simplest searches yield thousands of results. Pornographic content is prohibited on the platform, regardless of whether it is AI-generated or not.

One of those affected, the American actress Olivia Munn, is now taking action against the site together with her lawyer. However, according to the lawyer, Etsy is slow to respond to requests to remove these types of images. It took six days for the company to remove his client’s photos and only after Forbes contacted them about the matter.

Deepfakes have become mainstream

When asked by Forbes, Etsy emphasized that it was aware of the problem and was doing everything it could to remove these deepfakes from the market. But according to the American magazine, most deepfake porn offers remained online for days after the announcement. The prices of these offers range from less than one dollar to just over five dollars.

According to one of the traders who offer such deepfakes on the platform and agreed to talk to Forbes, that’s because the programs are easy to use. Moreover, they are so widespread that many interested parties can simply have the images generated themselves. For Hany Farid, a computer science professor at the University of California, the fact that these images appear on Etsy is proof that the technology has gone mainstream.