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

The White House is calling on tech giants to patrol their app stores for programs that can make explicit images without the person's consent.

Amazon, Microsoft

WASHINGTON — 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.

“If you’re a teenage girl, if you’re a gay kid, these are problems that people are experiencing right now,” she said. “We’ve seen an acceleration because of generative AI that’s moving really fast. And the fastest thing that can happen is for companies to step up and take responsibility.”

A document shared with AP ahead of its Thursday release calls for action from not just AI developers but payment processors, financial institutions, cloud computing providers, search engines and the gatekeepers — namely Apple and Google — that control what makes it onto mobile app stores.

The private sector should step up to “disrupt the monetization” of image-based sexual abuse, restricting payment access particularly to sites that advertise explicit images of minors, the administration said.

Prabhakar said many payment platforms and financial institutions already say that they won't support the kinds of businesses promoting abusive imagery.

“But sometimes it’s not enforced; sometimes they don’t have those terms of service,” she said. “And so that’s an example of something that could be done much more rigorously.”

Cloud service providers and mobile app stores could also “curb web services and mobile applications that are marketed for the purpose of creating or altering sexual images without individuals’ consent," the document says.

And whether it is AI-generated or a real nude photo put on the internet, survivors should more easily be able to get online platforms to remove them.

The most widely known victim of pornographic deepfake images is Taylor Swift, whose ardent fanbase fought back in January when abusive AI-generated images of the singer-songwriter began circulating on social media. Microsoft promised to strengthen its safeguards after some of the Swift images were traced to its AI visual design tool.

A growing number of schools in the U.S. and elsewhere are also grappling with AI-generated deepfake nudes depicting their students. In some cases, fellow teenagers were found to be creating AI-manipulated images and sharing them with classmates.

Last summer, the Biden administration brokered voluntary commitments by Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft and other major technology companies to place a range of safeguards on new AI systems before releasing them publicly.

That was followed by Biden signing an ambitious executive order in October designed to steer how AI is developed so that companies can profit without putting public safety in jeopardy. While focused on broader AI concerns, including national security, it nodded to the emerging problem of AI-generated child abuse imagery and finding better ways to detect it.

But Biden also said the administration's AI safeguards would need to be supported by legislation. A bipartisan group of U.S. senators is now pushing Congress to spend at least $32 billion over the next three years to develop artificial intelligence and fund measures to safely guide it, though has largely put off calls to enact those safeguards into law.

Encouraging companies to step up and make voluntary commitments “doesn’t change the underlying need for Congress to take action here,” said Jennifer Klein, director of the White House Gender Policy Council.

Longstanding laws already prohibit making and possessing sexual images of children, even if they're fake. Federal prosecutors brought charges earlier this month against a Wisconsin man they said used a popular AI image-generator, Stable Diffusion, to make thousands of AI-generated realistic images of minors engaged in sexual conduct. An attorney for the man declined to comment after his arraignment hearing Wednesday.

But there's almost no oversight over the tech tools and services that make it possible to create such images. Some are on fly-by-night commercial websites that reveal little information about who runs them or the technology they're based on.

The Stanford Internet Observatory in December said it found thousands of images of suspected child sexual abuse in the giant AI database LAION, an index of online images and captions that’s been used to train leading AI image-makers such as Stable Diffusion.

London-based Stability AI, which owns the latest versions of Stable Diffusion, said this week that it “did not approve the release” of the earlier model reportedly used by the Wisconsin man. Such open-sourced models, because their technical components are released publicly on the internet, are hard to put back in the bottle.

Prabhakar said it's not just open-source AI technology that's causing harm.

“It's a broader problem,” she said. “Unfortunately, this is a category that a lot of people seem to be using image generators for. And it’s a place where we’ve just seen such an explosion. But I think it’s not neatly broken down into open source and proprietary systems.”

——

AP Writer Josh Boak contributed to this report.

[video_shortcode_youtube src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yGwvqugTbEo?rel=0" itemprop="image" content="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yGwvqugTbEo?rel=0" data-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yGwvqugTbEo?rel=0"]

OTHER NEWS

27 minutes ago

Emma Raducanu turns down Olympics wild card – but Andy Murray in Team GB squad

28 minutes ago

Mathematician Reveals 'Equals' Has More Than One Meaning in Math

28 minutes ago

Candidates race into France's snap legislative poll but one convicted for spousal assault withdraws

28 minutes ago

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says use of Russian assets from Ukraine is not 'theft' despite Putin's claims

28 minutes ago

Maine police kill armed man after a night of gunfire and burned homes

29 minutes ago

How Apple, Microsoft and 3 other tech giants can make money with AI geared to consumers

29 minutes ago

Guy Haymes death: Why Jayson Brett Dal Molin didn't face court after being charged with murder of much-loved surfer on Sydney's northern beaches

32 minutes ago

‘We Thank PM Modi’: Sharad Pawar’s Remark With Allies Stings BJP

32 minutes ago

Nick Jonas and Adrienne Warren to Star in ‘Last Five Years’ on Broadway

34 minutes ago

Celtics Fans Send Desperate Plea to Jayson Tatum Ahead of NBA Finals Game 5

34 minutes ago

Inside Finland’s first NATO mission with UK forces in show of strength to Putin

34 minutes ago

Las Vegas Raiders post-minicamp starting offense projection: Who's QB?

34 minutes ago

Six MAD Shorts heading to the Toronto Arab Film Festival

34 minutes ago

Kate Middleton's 'perfect' Father's Day photo of Prince William and their children sends royal fans into a frenzy as they say they're left in tears over sweet 'we love you, Papa!' message

34 minutes ago

Dozens of firefighters tackle raging inferno inside flat in London tower block - as four people are rushed to hospital

34 minutes ago

Biden slams the Supreme Court and rips into Trump at Jimmy Kimmel-hosted celebrity fundraiser attended by Obama, George Clooney and Julia Roberts

34 minutes ago

Eat more protein and less carbs if you want to lose weight and feel less hungry, new study suggests

37 minutes ago

'Dan Hurley just used and abused the Los Angeles Lakers.' — Skip on Hurley deciding to stay at UConn

38 minutes ago

Hamburg police shoot man with axe and ‘Molotov cocktail’ ahead of Euro 2024 game

38 minutes ago

Houston native making Hollywood dreams come true, and wants to bring some of it back to Space City

39 minutes ago

Scorching heat, rising humidity in Chicago's forecast Sunday, along with threat of storms

39 minutes ago

CBIC mounting multi-modal awareness against frauds in name of Customs

39 minutes ago

He's played 70 games for Ten Hag: Man Utd eye 42m Branthwaite rival

39 minutes ago

WNBA All-Star Fires Stern Message To Players Who Want Caitlin Clark To Fail

40 minutes ago

Jack Draper WINS his first ATP Tour title as new Brit No 1 comes from a set down to beat Matteo Berrettini in the Stuttgart Open final

40 minutes ago

Woman who spent 43 years in prison has conviction overturned as case takes shocking twist

40 minutes ago

Serbia vs England - Euro 2024: Live score, team news and updates as the Three Lions quest to 'Bring Football Home' gets underway against a Serbian team led by Mitrovic and Dusan Tadic

45 minutes ago

Data analyst reveals the state where gas prices are expected to increase to $10 per gallon

45 minutes ago

Video: Three Lions fans' booze-up kicks off ahead of England's Euros clash with Serbia TODAY - with new video showing supporters singing chorus of '10 German Bombers' in defiance of FA and police

45 minutes ago

Bec Judd reveals what REALLY happened to the red dress that launched her career at the 2004 Brownlow: 'It was definitely a moment'

45 minutes ago

Luis Diaz is caught by HORROR two-footed tackle in Colombia's friendly win against Bolivia as Liverpool fans fume over 'disgrace' as opposing defender isn't sent off

45 minutes ago

Levi Colwill 'is open to joining Bayern Munich' with new boss Vincent Kompany a keen admirer of the Chelsea defender

45 minutes ago

FBI agent and Twin Towers first responder reveal how likely another 9/11 attack is on U.S. soil...and why it will be even more deadly

46 minutes ago

Buck, Bajraktarevic spark Revolution to victory over Whitecaps

46 minutes ago

80 countries at Swiss conference agree territorial integrity of Ukraine must be basis of any peace

46 minutes ago

Haj 2024: 14 Jordanians dead, 17 missing in Saudi as authorities warn of high temperatures

46 minutes ago

BBC pundit convinced Levy will spend 60 million on Tottenham signing

46 minutes ago

Why bashing billionaires won’t solve the inequality crisis

46 minutes ago

Israel pauses military activity along southern Gaza road to facilitate aid

46 minutes ago

How England’s top private schools came to own 38,000 acres of land