White House pushes tech industry to shut down market for sexually abusive AI deepfakes

President Joe Biden’s administration is pushing the tech industry and financial institutions to shut down a growing market of abusive sexual images made with artificial intelligence technology.

New generative AI tools have made it easy to transform someone’s likeness into a sexually explicit AI deepfake and share those realistic images across chatrooms or social media. The victims — be they celebrities or children — have little recourse to stop it.

The White House is putting out a call Thursday looking for voluntary cooperation from companies in the absence of federal legislation. By committing to a set of specific measures, officials hope the private sector can curb the creation, spread and monetization of such nonconsensual AI images, including explicit images of children.

“As generative AI broke on the scene, everyone was speculating about where the first real harms would come. And I think we have the answer,” said Biden’s chief science adviser Arati Prabhakar, director of the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy.

She described to The Associated Press a “phenomenal acceleration” of nonconsensual imagery fueled by AI tools and largely targeting women and girls in a way that can upend their lives.

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