San Francisco city attorney David Chiu announced his intention to shut down 16 well-known AI “stripping” sites at a press conference Thursday.
reported that the City Attorney accuses these sites of violating federal laws regarding revenge pornography, pornography and child pornography. Chiu’s office also accused the sites of violating California’s unfair competition law because “the harm they cause to consumers far outweighs any benefits associated with those practices,” according to the California Supreme Court.
The complaint focuses on 50 defendants Chiu intends to prosecute for using stripping websites. Some of the defendants’ names and websites have been redacted but it also publicly reveals several companies that operate “some of the most famous websites in the world that offer defamation of images of women and girls” such as Sol Ecom located in Florida, Briver New. Mexico and UK-based Itai Tech Ltd. The only defendant identified in the complaint is Augustin Gribinets of Estonia, who is accused of running an AI stripping site with unauthorized images of women and children.
These websites generated more than 200 million visits in a six-month period. Indecent images of women and children on these sites are “used to harass, threaten and humiliate women and girls” as they gain more visitors “and this oppressive practice shows no signs of abating,” according to the complaint.
The city’s attorney cites one case in its formal complaint from February in which an AI stripping site produced images of 16 eighth-graders at a California middle school. This incident may refer to one that happened at Beverly Hills High School where 16 students were distributing fake photos of other students being naked. The school district has expelled five students for their involvement in distributing illegal images, according to the report .
Deepfake technology has become a major legal issue especially at the government level. Last month, it published a report on digital replicas and concluded that “new legislation is needed.” Just days later, a bipartisan Senate panel introduced new legislation that would protect people from having their voice, face or body altered by AI without their consent.
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