NY Prosecutors Shut Down 12 AI Deepfake Porn Sites

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced this week that his office has taken down 12 websites that hosted AI-generated deepfake pornography featuring more than 1,200 individuals, both celebrities and private citizens. The sites let users superimpose real people's faces and bodies onto explicit content without consent, creating what Bragg described as 'hyper-realistic images and videos' that caused lasting harm to victims' careers and mental wellbeing.

Bragg noted his office is aware of domestic violence cases where abusers threatened to release deepfake content of victims, and many affected people did not realise legal action was possible. He is encouraging more victims to come forward, though he has not confirmed whether arrests or criminal charges will follow, stating only that the investigation continues. His office says it will keep monitoring for attempts to revive the sites under new domain names.

This action follows broader efforts by governments and tech companies to curb the spread of deepfake abuse, including a Microsoft lawsuit against developers who misused its Azure OpenAI services, and a European Commission inquiry into X's Grok AI tool over its role in generating illegal images of a minor.