Speaker 1: A quick note. This is episode six of a six
Speaker 1: part series. If you haven't heard the prior episodes, we
Speaker 1: recommend going back and starting there. It should also be
Speaker 1: noted that this series explores sexualized imagery involving miners and violence.
Speaker 1: Please take here when listening Leavitt Town, the place was
Speaker 1: itself and innovation. William J. Levitt of Levitt and Sons,
Speaker 1: inspired by the production assembly line, broke down mass produced
Speaker 1: housing into just twenty six steps, with construction workers building
Speaker 1: a house in just one day, quick cost saving production
Speaker 1: of identical track housing in mere months. In nineteen forty seven,
Speaker 1: thousands of houses were built and white families only were
Speaker 1: moving in restricting by racial covenant. The innovation for some,
Speaker 1: but it was a kind of progress. And yet today
Speaker 1: the place that was once the pinnacle of innovation is
Speaker 1: like everywhere else now, struggling to keep up with the
Speaker 1: incredible force of technological change.
Speaker 2: When I first got here, we were working off of
Speaker 2: VCR teaps.
Speaker 1: Lieutenant Detective Devon Ross has been at the Nassau County
Speaker 1: Police Department since the late nineties.
Speaker 2: Teap fed camp quarters in eight milimeter cassette taps for audio,
Speaker 2: and now we're in a world that's the people who
Speaker 2: worked with me back then wouldn't even recognize today today.
Speaker 1: Ross is the of the Cyber Crimes Unit, investigating crimes
Speaker 1: like cyber extortion, online fraud, and deep fakes.
Speaker 2: They call it an arms race between law enforcement, slash
Speaker 2: legislation and technology, and it's just where we're losing. We
Speaker 2: are absolutely losing the things that we're trying to think
Speaker 2: about solving that happened six weeks ago. They are already
Speaker 2: ten months ahead of us, and it's a shame.
Speaker 1: The Petrick Carry case is sort of a perfect example.
Speaker 1: In twenty nineteen, he was essentially using glorified Photoshop to
Speaker 1: make the images. Basically, he was creating a digital collage
Speaker 1: a face here, pasted on a body there, with some
Speaker 1: rudimentary AI to help blend the pieces and presto a
Speaker 1: whole new picture. But now would be Patrick Carries. Can
Speaker 1: use an app or a website and a few swipes
Speaker 1: a few seconds later, boom, something new that looks real.
Speaker 3: So I've opened up my laptop and I've got a
Speaker 3: few windows open of several of the neudifying apps which
Speaker 3: were on so Olivia and I decided to try it
Speaker 3: for ourselves. This tech that in many ways brought us
Speaker 3: to the story. So Drawn Nudes is the app we're
Speaker 3: going to go visit.
Speaker 1: I'd love to see.
Speaker 3: We were doing some reporting in California together and we
Speaker 3: decided to do a test run of some of the
Speaker 3: latest tools using artificial intelligence to modify pictures which make
Speaker 3: it so people who were dressed now appear naked. They're
Speaker 3: called undressing or nudifi websites and apps. For our experiment,
Speaker 3: we used one of the most popular websites, Draw Nudes,
Speaker 3: that had more than twelve million visits in the first
Speaker 3: half of twenty twenty four. These sites let you get
Speaker 3: started quickly. You don't need to enter an email or
Speaker 3: a name to use them, and you can make your
Speaker 3: first few fakes for free. So it's saying, have someone
Speaker 3: to undress upload a photo. So I'm going to upload
Speaker 3: a photo from my.
Speaker 4: Library.
Speaker 3: So this is a photo of me. I am in
Speaker 3: a desert in Nevada. Oh, it looks so cool and
Speaker 3: I have been sort of going for a jog.
Speaker 1: Okay, in this photo, I can see Margie. She looks
Speaker 1: really happy. She's got her arms stretched out, she's standing.
Speaker 1: It looks like you're wearing running shoes, maybe some a
Speaker 1: casual pair of shorts, a sports boru and a bucket
Speaker 1: hit in Sunny's and you're in the middle of the desert.
Speaker 3: So done, I'm going to pick auto so ai paint
Speaker 3: clothes on its own, Okay, so you just paint over
Speaker 3: where your clothes are. So it's basically on my phone.
Speaker 3: I'm just basically tapping on my sports bar and my
Speaker 3: shorts and then it's highlighted in orange. Say's processing photos.
Speaker 1: Almost of the place. Do I enclose the page? Oh
Speaker 1: my god, Oh, oh my god, it looks so real.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I look completely naked. I kind of couldn't believe it.
Speaker 3: In a matter of seconds. This website did what it
Speaker 3: likely took Patrick Carey and others hours to accomplish.
Speaker 1: And it's proportionally careached to your body. Oh my god.
Speaker 3: Welcome to the future where you really can't believe your eyes.
Speaker 3: From iHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg and Kaleidoscope, this is Levettown. I'm
Speaker 3: Margie Murphy and I'm Onlivia Carve. Nothing can quite prepare
Speaker 3: you for this. One moment, a smiling vacation picture, the
Speaker 3: next you're naked. It's not really your body and it's
Speaker 3: no longer your photo. It's completely surreal to see it happen,
Speaker 3: and a little weird to share it with a coworker.
Speaker 3: I found it hard to look Olivia in the eye
Speaker 3: for a moment afterward. I can't imagine what it would
Speaker 3: be like to have your classmates looking at something that
Speaker 3: feels so intimate. However, I created that particular image, I
Speaker 3: might not have known exactly what I would look like
Speaker 3: once the tech undressed me, but I knew basically what
Speaker 3: was coming. That's not often the case. Most people who
Speaker 3: make deep fake pornography haven't asked their subjects whether they're
Speaker 3: okay with it. They just do it. It's pretty much
Speaker 3: the reason these apps exist. So when a person learns
Speaker 3: that their image has been altered this way for someone
Speaker 3: else's pleasure, it can feel like a violation. For many
Speaker 3: of the women we spoke to, it was a violation,
Speaker 3: a new kind of violence. As a society, we haven't
Speaker 3: even begun to grapple with this. Currently, it isn't a
Speaker 3: crime under federal law to create and share deep fake
Speaker 3: pornography based on adults. When it comes to fake neods
Speaker 3: of children, the law is a narrow and pertains only
Speaker 3: to cases where children are being abused. In March of
Speaker 3: twenty twenty four, the FBI did issue a public announcement
Speaker 3: saying child sexual abuse material, even if created by AI,
Speaker 3: is illegal, but again, the law they are referring to
Speaker 3: is quite narrow. So far, at least twenty five states
Speaker 3: have tried to address this with their own laws and regulations,
Speaker 3: but it should be noted that federal law protects the
Speaker 3: hosting websites, whether it's a forum, social media platform, or
Speaker 3: internet provider, from being held liable for any content, even
Speaker 3: if it's illegal, posted to their sites.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, EPP developers are racing to mat a growing demand
Speaker 1: to make better nodes faster, and many of the people
Speaker 1: who are using this tech aren't adults. The a teens
Speaker 1: wielding this technology against other teens.
Speaker 5: Deep fake porn crushing high school girls in Westfield, New Jersey.
Speaker 5: Two students are some serious trouble after being accused of
Speaker 5: using AI to create inappropriate images.
Speaker 6: Beverly Hills Middle.
Speaker 4: School students are in trouble for using AI to create
Speaker 4: and share the fake nude images of their classmates.
Speaker 1: Parents are at a loss and so are school officials.
Speaker 1: In so many places, there are no guard rails to
Speaker 1: make sure what happened in their school in the town
Speaker 1: doesn't happen again. Since I started reporting on Leavettown in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three, I've followed as cases like these have
Speaker 1: mushroomed across the country, but one in particular stood out.
Speaker 4: I didn't actually realize that it was such a big
Speaker 4: thing across the country.
Speaker 7: I think.
Speaker 1: Detective Laurel Beer is one of two investigators in a
Speaker 1: small police department in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 4: That's probably what surprised me the most was that there's
Speaker 4: been so many cases that haven't ever gone to prosecution
Speaker 4: simply because they didn't know how to, they didn't know
Speaker 4: how to use the laws to their advantage, or they
Speaker 4: didn't have a law that they could use to press
Speaker 4: charges for something like this.
Speaker 1: Ancaster is a place synonymous with farmland and the Amish,
Speaker 1: where it's pretty normal to see a horse and buggy
Speaker 1: clumping down the street.
Speaker 4: Because we only have two of us, we pretty much
Speaker 4: do every kind of investigation that comes into our office,
Speaker 4: from your property crimes like burglary or trespassing, all the
Speaker 4: way up to homicide that we would have it, but
Speaker 4: pornography cases, child pornography cases, stuff like that.
Speaker 7: That's something that we handle between the two of us.
Speaker 7: We handle several a year.
Speaker 1: In early twenty twenty four, Laurel got a call from
Speaker 1: a patrol officer. Parents whose children attended a nearby private
Speaker 1: school reported that one of the students had accidentally shared
Speaker 1: a photograph and a group text messaging thread. That photo
Speaker 1: was pulled from the social media account of a female classmate,
Speaker 1: but she had been undressed with technology. It was a
Speaker 1: deep fake. The officer didn't know whether they could arrest
Speaker 1: the student, but Laurel had worked a similar case the
Speaker 1: year before. She knew that in Pennsylvania, any quote depiction
Speaker 1: of a child in a sexual manner, created by AI
Speaker 1: or not can lead to a child abuse charge.
Speaker 4: It really helped move things along, I think, at a
Speaker 4: much faster piece because we knew where to go.
Speaker 3: The pictures in this case weren't being traded on a
Speaker 3: tributing website like they were in Leavittown. This time, they
Speaker 3: were being shared between two classmates over a messaging platform
Speaker 3: called discord, until one of them messed up and sent
Speaker 3: a deep fake to a larger group threat. But because
Speaker 3: the rest of the pictures were being privately exchanged. No
Speaker 3: one knew exactly who'd been deep faked, so students and
Speaker 3: families were panicking, and the detective wanted to provide answers.
Speaker 3: Like the police and prosecut is in Levittown, Laurel got
Speaker 3: a search warrant for online records and chat histories. It
Speaker 3: was a painstaking process to identify each victim. Laurel created spreadsheets,
Speaker 3: collected and cross checked the pictures against yearbook, interviewed witnesses,
Speaker 3: and contacted families. In all, she was able to identify
Speaker 3: sixty victims, fifty nine of whom were miners.
Speaker 4: I was surprised over the course of the investigation to
Speaker 4: find out exactly how large scale this case actually was.
Speaker 3: It's one of the largest known cases of deep fake
Speaker 3: pornography in the US that we know about. And just
Speaker 3: like in Levittown, these young women knew the alleged suspects.
Speaker 7: Which seems to be the case in most of the
Speaker 7: ones that I've researched and seen across the country. Is
Speaker 7: that most of the time it's not somebody that these
Speaker 7: kids don't know. Sadly, it's someone that they do know.
Speaker 4: Just knowing that day in and day out, this person
Speaker 4: was among them in their day to day life. Well,
Speaker 4: they ate lunch, while they went to class, while they
Speaker 4: played sports, you know whatever it was that they might
Speaker 4: have had a class with one of their students.
Speaker 3: School officials in Lancaster first learned about the deep Feek
Speaker 3: images several months before Laurel got involved.
Speaker 1: In November twenty twenty three, an anonymous tipster told school
Speaker 1: officials that a student had created AI generated nude images
Speaker 1: of their classmates. The school launched an internal investigation, but
Speaker 1: couldn't corroborate the tip. They did not go to the police.
Speaker 1: Months later, after another anonymous tip, they opened a new investigation.
Speaker 1: After that, one of the suspects was identified and withdrew
Speaker 1: from the school. The incident was reported by the school
Speaker 1: to the state agency responsible for child abuse reporting. The
Speaker 1: police had no idea this was happening until spring twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four, when a mother told them.
Speaker 4: A Lancaster Country Day High School student staged a walkout
Speaker 4: this morning in protest of the administration's handling of the
Speaker 4: private school's ongoing AI nude photo.
Speaker 1: Scanned on this In November twenty twenty four, hundreds of
Speaker 1: students and faculty walked out in protest of how the
Speaker 1: school had handled the situation. Classes were canceled. One student
Speaker 1: said she thought the action sent strong Massachestts school, that
Speaker 1: students are upset with how the adults handle the AI
Speaker 1: situation and that girls don't feel safe at school. Parents
Speaker 1: were outraged about what they believed was negligence on the
Speaker 1: part of the school, and they sued. As of the
Speaker 1: end of January, the cases ongoing. Officials from the school
Speaker 1: told us they cannot discuss the details of the matter.
Speaker 1: They said they are working on caring for their students
Speaker 1: in the process of reviewing school policies. They also added
Speaker 1: that they've begun additional staff training on child protection and
Speaker 1: mandatory reporting. In the meantime. The suspects in the Lancaster
Speaker 1: case have been charged with felony offenses, including sexual abuse
Speaker 1: of children and the dissemination of child sexual abuse materials.
Speaker 1: They're due to enter please soon. Police haven't shared their ages,
Speaker 1: but according to local news reports, at least one of
Speaker 1: them was in ninth grade at the time. They will
Speaker 1: be tried as miners. In Laurel's experience, that could mean
Speaker 1: jail time or being sent to a rehabilitation facility for.
Speaker 4: A facility that helps with the sexualized behaviors. It's a
Speaker 4: more of a treatment than a punishment, I guess you
Speaker 4: could say.
Speaker 7: So that's one possible.
Speaker 4: The other possibility is just a detention center like you
Speaker 4: would expect there to be. But it's nice that we
Speaker 4: have that option, that we have done that before. Worry
Speaker 4: you sent them to a treatment facility to again fix
Speaker 4: the behavior so it doesn't continue into adulthood.
Speaker 3: Because that's the other issue in these cases that have
Speaker 3: popped up across the country. The people who are behind
Speaker 3: deep fakes, non consensual pornography and the harassment are often
Speaker 3: the same age as they're victims. As deep fake technology
Speaker 3: becomes ubiquitous, intuitive, and easier to use, the users become
Speaker 3: younger and younger, coming to these sites right when their
Speaker 3: desires and their concept of sexuality is starting to be hardwired,
Speaker 3: and while they're exploring this part of themselves. Instead of
Speaker 3: grabbing a playboy from underneath dad's bed or sneaking a
Speaker 3: glance at Skinomax, they can now make in trade pictures
Speaker 3: of people that they actually know without necessarily understanding the
Speaker 3: consequences both psychologically and legally.
Speaker 7: These kids can do it in the privacy of their bedroom.
Speaker 4: No one knows that they're doing it, and that just
Speaker 4: creates this start on the line of deviancy, where now
Speaker 4: it's okay, well, if I can look at that, then
Speaker 4: maybe I should try girls my age, which is what
Speaker 4: we see a lot, is that they're looking at They're
Speaker 4: looking at pornographic images for kids their age, which for
Speaker 4: them doesn't seem wrong because it's their age, but it
Speaker 4: is still child pornography.
Speaker 1: Of course. And I guess if they can't find pictures
Speaker 1: on the Internet of girls their age, now there are
Speaker 1: apps allowing them to create it themselves. Yes, at this point,
Speaker 1: it isn't a crime federal law to create and share
Speaker 1: deep fake pornography, and the Supreme Court hasn't ruled on
Speaker 1: what can be deep faked legally and what can't be.
Speaker 1: There is a constitutional prerogative to protect free speech, but
Speaker 1: stopping non consensual deep fake pornography is one of the
Speaker 1: few things that nearly everyone in Congress openly supports. In fact,
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty four, the Senate unanimously passed a bipartisan
Speaker 1: measure that would regulate deep fake pornography, making it a
Speaker 1: federal offense to make and distribute non consensual deep fake porn,
Speaker 1: and it would require social media companies to remove the
Speaker 1: images within forty eight hours of being reported. Companies like Meta, Google,
Speaker 1: and TikTok all came out in support. The bill died
Speaker 1: in the House at the end of twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: but its backers say it's a priority for them to
Speaker 1: reintroduce and pass it into law in the new session.
Speaker 1: And while states are trying to pass their own laws,
Speaker 1: many are written so that only people under the age
Speaker 1: of eighteen can be considered victims of deep fake pornography. Still,
Speaker 1: other states, like New York, have now expanded existing revenge
Speaker 1: porn statutes to include deep fakes, but this can mean
Speaker 1: that a victim has to prove intent that the person
Speaker 1: who made and posted the image actually wanted to do
Speaker 1: them harm. In Pennsylvania, law enforcement officials like Laurel are
Speaker 1: using child sexual abuse statutes to charge miners in non
Speaker 1: consensual pornography cases. Late last year, Pennsylvania passed a bill
Speaker 1: expanding the definition of the quote unlawful dissemination of an
Speaker 1: intimate image to include deep fake pornography. So whatever legal
Speaker 1: protections do exist are patchwork, uneven and untested. But there
Speaker 1: are other officials going after the people profiting from this technology.
Speaker 1: If you could just start by introducing yourself, that would
Speaker 1: be perfect.
Speaker 6: Sure. I'm David Chu. I'm the City Attorney of San Francisco.
Speaker 3: David Chu had first heard about Newdifi apps through the
Speaker 3: women in his office, who were both lawyers and mothers
Speaker 3: of teenage girls. He said, he realized how dangerous these
Speaker 3: websites and apps could be, and he decided to act.
Speaker 6: We have brought a first of its kind lawsuit against
Speaker 6: the world's largest websites engaged in AI facilitated exploitation. We
Speaker 6: have sued sixteen of the most visited websites that create
Speaker 6: and distribute AI generated non consensual pornography.
Speaker 3: Choose Office filed the suit in August twenty twenty four,
Speaker 3: arguing the new Deify sites not only violate federal and
Speaker 3: state criminal statutes against revenge pornography and child pornography, but
Speaker 3: also california is unfair competition law, which regulates how companies
Speaker 3: can advertise online.
Speaker 6: Collectively, these websites have been visited over two hundred million
Speaker 6: times in the first six months of this year in
Speaker 6: twenty twenty four. These operators are profiting from this content.
Speaker 6: They require users to subscribe or pay to generate images,
Speaker 6: and they know exactly what they're doing. They know that
Speaker 6: this is non consensual. These images are incredibly realistic. There's
Speaker 6: one website that specifically promoted the non consensual nature of this,
Speaker 6: and I quote, imagine wasting time taking her out on
Speaker 6: dates when you can just use website xxx to get
Speaker 6: her notes. And so our lawsuit, among other things, is
Speaker 6: seeking to shut them down.
Speaker 1: Have you heard from any of the companies named in
Speaker 1: the lawsuits.
Speaker 6: It will be interesting to see if they scurry out
Speaker 6: of the darkest corners of the Internet to defend this.
Speaker 3: She says. His office hasn't heard from many of the
Speaker 3: companies named in the lawsuit, and his office might be
Speaker 3: waiting a while because these sixteen websites and apps are
Speaker 3: being developed all over the world. One of these websites
Speaker 3: is draw Needs, the same one Olivia and I used
Speaker 3: to make a deep fake of me. You can find
Speaker 3: it easily, but finding out who runs the app that's trickier.
Speaker 3: We tried following the money when it came to the
Speaker 3: draw neuds app. We paid eight dollars for their premium service,
Speaker 3: which allowed us a window into how they collect the cash.
Speaker 3: Making a payment isn't as easy as typing in your
Speaker 3: credit card, So when I was trying to pay, it
Speaker 3: takes you off app and you talk to these dealers.
Speaker 3: It's a live chat and you'll say to them, here
Speaker 3: you have a specific link that corresponds to your account,
Speaker 3: and they'll say, okay, here's a PayPal link. Go to
Speaker 3: that PayPal account, give me the transaction ID, and then
Speaker 3: I will go and kind of put those coins that
Speaker 3: you get, the eight dollars worth of coins into your app.
Speaker 1: Why there's so many steps to get coins to.
Speaker 3: Do this, I think there's a couple of reasons. It
Speaker 3: could be that they are just trying to hide their tracks.
Speaker 3: If you are paying people to use their PayPal accounts,
Speaker 3: there's no link back to you, so there's no paper record.
Speaker 3: The other reason that you know that it's not just
Speaker 3: a simple use your credit card thing is because a
Speaker 3: lot of companies, payment processing companies are now banning these
Speaker 3: kind of apps. The truth is it's not really complicated
Speaker 3: for the consumer, but those extra steps make it harder
Speaker 3: to determine the identity and the finances of the developers.
Speaker 3: And that's exactly who he wanted to find so we
Speaker 3: went looking for the guy whose name appeared to be
Speaker 3: connected to draw nudes to ask him about a lot
Speaker 3: of things, including the lawsuit. I was looking for a
Speaker 3: guy named Cyril. What I know about him is he
Speaker 3: appears to be in his early thirties and he's from Ukraine.
Speaker 3: His hair is long enough to tuck behind both ears.
Speaker 3: He looks more like a DJ than a tech mogul.
Speaker 3: He has an active social media presence and appears to
Speaker 3: have a model girlfriend. He moved to the United States
Speaker 3: before the war in twenty twenty one and lives somewhere
Speaker 3: in the US. Cyril has several businesses. He's talked publicly
Speaker 3: about one of them, which acts as a sort of
Speaker 3: broker for internet for a fee. Cyril's company helps a
Speaker 3: business to advertise on the web. Here he is at
Speaker 3: a conference in Thailand in December talking about marketing supplements.
Speaker 3: This one promises everything from weight loss to bigger muscles
Speaker 3: and better erections.
Speaker 8: I run the agency and we help like we and
Speaker 8: we helped to some neutral guys like to scale or
Speaker 8: like to build the Neutra offers or neutral whitehead brands.
Speaker 3: But it was another one of Cyril's companies that caught
Speaker 3: our attention sole e Com, which was listed on the
Speaker 3: bottom of the draw News homepage and in the David
Speaker 3: Chu lawsuit. Sole eCOM has a registered address in Los Angeles.
Speaker 3: I spent weeks trying to contact Cyril and anyone who
Speaker 3: might know him. That's when we tried knocking on the
Speaker 3: placelisted is soul Ecom's office. Hi, my name is Margie.
Speaker 7: Are you Pilo? Oh?
Speaker 2: Okay, so I'm a reporter.
Speaker 3: From The person who answered said they'd never heard of
Speaker 3: his name or the business. But more than a month
Speaker 3: after I started looking for him, Cyril finally picked up
Speaker 3: the phone. We talked for maybe half an hour. During
Speaker 3: the conversation, Cyril was adamant that sole eComm and draw
Speaker 3: Nudes were separate companies. He said that, like his other clients,
Speaker 3: the developers of draw Nudes app had come to him
Speaker 3: for help marketing their product. He also said he had
Speaker 3: actually met the app's owners, two men, he says, one
Speaker 3: a Russian living in Cyprus who was big in the
Speaker 3: porn industry, the other a Belarusian who lived in the States.
Speaker 3: Cyril said that after reading several negative articles about the
Speaker 3: draw Nudes app, he told the developers he didn't want
Speaker 3: to work with them anymore. Cyril told me that he
Speaker 3: in soul eCOM, had not received any form of payment
Speaker 3: from Drawnuds or its developers. We spoke several times, but
Speaker 3: after our last conversation, promising to speak again, we hung
Speaker 3: up and then he ghosted me. I emailed, rang, sent
Speaker 3: telegram messages, booked time on his calendly. All the while
Speaker 3: I watched Cyril attend a tech conference in Thailand, travel
Speaker 3: through Italy, and spend Christmas on a luxury ski vacation
Speaker 3: in France. As Cyril was off avoiding me and living
Speaker 3: his best life, twenty twenty four came to a close,
Speaker 3: and with it, the drawnuds app and website went offline. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: I was looking at other nudify apps named in the
Speaker 3: California lawsuit, one which is called cloth Off. It's even
Speaker 3: bigger than draw Nudes, with almost twenty seven million visitors
Speaker 3: last year alone. As I clicked around the site and
Speaker 3: the app, I was struck by how similar the cloth Off,
Speaker 3: draw Nudes, and another site called undress app were. They
Speaker 3: all have the same interface, same graphics, same text, same design,
Speaker 3: the same support assistant infrastructure. In fact, many of the
Speaker 3: top nudifying apps seemed to be shell websites that hyperlinked
Speaker 3: to each other, moving Internet traffic around to get people
Speaker 3: to pay up for a smaller group of services that
Speaker 3: all worked in exactly the same way. And when I
Speaker 3: was using draw Nudes and had a question for customer service,
Speaker 3: up popped the cloth Off name and logo, same customer service,
Speaker 3: same company. I contacted customer service again to ask if
Speaker 3: cloth Off or draw Nudes had been bought or sold recently.
Speaker 3: I was assured that owners hadn't changed, but that the
Speaker 3: cloth Off and draw Nude websites had moved to a
Speaker 3: different domain for quote greater online recognition and to speed
Speaker 3: up its performance, which may very well be true, But
Speaker 3: another effect of switching domains is to make it really
Speaker 3: difficult to trace the owners and hold them legally accountable.
Speaker 3: All signs point to one likely explanation. Cloth Off, draw Nudes,
Speaker 3: and the undress app all sites named in the California
Speaker 3: suit may be the work of the same people. We
Speaker 3: attempted to contact the sites via their service email addresses,
Speaker 3: but got no response. Again, a handful of people may
Speaker 3: be behind three of the most widely used nudifi apps
Speaker 3: in the country, and the impact of their product is
Speaker 3: at best terrorizing young women and girls and at worst
Speaker 3: changing young men and women. It's changing how they relate
Speaker 3: to the world and each other. While Apple and Google
Speaker 3: have banned a number of nudified products, apps, and websites
Speaker 3: from their app stores, their sites can readily be found
Speaker 3: on Google or Safari. Developers keep putting them out and anyone,
Speaker 3: anyone can use them. If this lawsuit fails to stop
Speaker 3: the influx of these apps, David Chu from California says
Speaker 3: there are other ways to defang them.
Speaker 6: There is a universe of other technology players and technology
Speaker 6: infrastructure in and around these websites.
Speaker 3: He's talking about Internet service providers, search engines, login authenticators,
Speaker 3: or payment processes. It sounds boring, but this is how
Speaker 3: tech works. Software working in tandem with online businesses to
Speaker 3: make even the most basic sites run. After being called
Speaker 3: out for their relationships with the newdify apps, some of
Speaker 3: these tech companies have already said they're going to stop
Speaker 3: working with them.
Speaker 1: But there are also richly capitalized teach companies like st
Speaker 1: Stability Ai and mid Journey that are creating powerful generative
Speaker 1: AI tools. These companies say they've put guardrails in place
Speaker 1: to prevent anyone from using the attack to create deep
Speaker 1: fake pawn, but there are ways to get around them
Speaker 1: by using the older open source versions of the attach
Speaker 1: or using special prompts to circumvent the word filters. Stability
Speaker 1: AI declined to be interviewed and we didn't hear back
Speaker 1: from mid Journey.
Speaker 3: And Newdify apps aren't being pushed into the shadows. Giants
Speaker 3: like Matter are allowing these companies to buy ads and
Speaker 3: market to consumers on their massive platforms. By some reports,
Speaker 3: nearly ninety percent of traffic to certain Newdify apps is
Speaker 3: driven by ads on Facebook or Instagram. We emailed that
Speaker 3: owner Matter, which told us these apps and these ads
Speaker 3: break their rules. They remove the ads when they become
Speaker 3: aware of them, disable the accounts responsible, and block links
Speaker 3: to the host websites, but the spokesperson noted this is
Speaker 3: an ongoing battle. The people behind these apps are constantly
Speaker 3: evolving their tactics to stay ahead of the game. If blocked,
Speaker 3: they just pop back up again under a new domain name.
Speaker 6: Our hope is with more public attention to what's happening here,
Speaker 6: as well as letting people know about the lawsuit that
Speaker 6: we're involved in that other players will step up to
Speaker 6: do their part to help all of us crack down
Speaker 6: on these bad actors and their use of AI exploitative
Speaker 6: technologies to abuse real people.
Speaker 1: Artificial intelligence is part of our reality now. It's everywhere,
Speaker 1: and it touches every single part of our lives. But
Speaker 1: just because it exists, it doesn't mean it can't be controlled.
Speaker 1: This isn't science fiction. Robots aren't taking over, at least
Speaker 1: not yet.
Speaker 6: I have to say one of the personal reasons why
Speaker 6: I am so motivated for our team to get to
Speaker 6: the bottom of this is I have an eight year
Speaker 6: old son, and I'm worried in a few years that
Speaker 6: if we don't get a handle on deep fake pornography,
Speaker 6: that his generation is going to be impacted in ways
Speaker 6: that we cannot anticipate today. Not just the impact on
Speaker 6: his female classmates, but what this will do to boys
Speaker 6: and teenagers as they grow up, learning about different norms
Speaker 6: in how to engage with their classmates, their friends, people
Speaker 6: they're going to have relationships with. This is horrifying and unfortunately,
Speaker 6: this AI facilitated exploitation, I'm worried has opened up a
Speaker 6: Pandora's box and if we don't act quickly, it could
Speaker 6: warp an entire generation of young people.
Speaker 1: The Livet Town case showed us that the stakes are high,
Speaker 1: much higher than many of us realize. While their story
Speaker 1: was one of the first, it took us beyond deep
Speaker 1: fakes and tributing websites, beyond the hurt and fear experienced
Speaker 1: by a couple dozen school kids. Even now, it stands
Speaker 1: as a warning.
Speaker 9: I'd hope that after this case, in his conviction, something's
Speaker 9: changed in the way that they approach these kinds of
Speaker 9: oversteppings of moral boundaries.
Speaker 1: You know. I asked Cecilia, one of the Livett Town women,
Speaker 1: what she thought may help other people who were experien
Speaker 1: variencing what she did.
Speaker 9: I'd hope that maybe after this we have more of
Speaker 9: an idea of what to do or how to approach
Speaker 9: it when someone does use AI or technology in a
Speaker 9: way to harm others. You know, it was one of
Speaker 9: the worst things I've ever been through, and not everyone
Speaker 9: is either healed enough or lucky enough to have an
Speaker 9: outlet to talk about that. But man, I really hope
Speaker 9: that something can be done in terms of regulation so
Speaker 9: that other people don't have to experience any aspect of
Speaker 9: how it feels to have that done to you.
Speaker 1: All the women we spoke to agreed to share these
Speaker 1: stories because they recognized that there are still very few
Speaker 1: safeguards in place to protect them or others even now.
Speaker 1: Patrick Carrey was released from prison early for good behavior
Speaker 1: in August twenty twenty three. He spent four months behind bars.
Speaker 1: Cecilia found out the hard way. She drove past him
Speaker 1: walking down the street one day and nearly had a
Speaker 1: panic attack. Kayla has also seen Patrick just around the
Speaker 1: corner from her house. She has become, in a way,
Speaker 1: a de facto spokesperson, a role she may not have
Speaker 1: asked for, but because of her experience, she says, she
Speaker 1: can't stay silent. How do you feel that there are
Speaker 1: still no federal laws preventing this today?
Speaker 5: It's very frustrating, very frustrating. I don't understand any of it.
Speaker 5: I really don't understand how hard it is for them
Speaker 5: not you see that. There's plenty of cases you can
Speaker 5: pull up and be like this, this is this, Like
Speaker 5: how could you not make a change there? A change
Speaker 5: needs to be made. It's unfortunate that we have to
Speaker 5: go through this, but that doesn't mean you can't stop it.
Speaker 5: There's something you can do. I mean, I don't know
Speaker 5: how hard it is, but think about how hard it
Speaker 5: is for me to speak out on this. I mean,
Speaker 5: I shouldn't have to do this, but I am because
Speaker 5: it's worth it, because it's worth getting the word out there,
Speaker 5: because something needs to change.
Speaker 3: This series is reported and hosted by Olivia Carvill and
Speaker 3: me Margie Murphy. Produced by Kaleidoscope, led by Julia Nutta,
Speaker 3: edited by Netta to Luis Semnani, Producing by Darren Luckpott's
Speaker 3: Executive produced by Kate Osby, Original composition and mixing by
Speaker 3: Steve Bone. Fact checking by Lena chang Our. Bloomberg editors
Speaker 3: are Caitlin Kenney and Jeff Grocopp. Some additional reporting by
Speaker 3: Samantha Stewart. Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's executive producer and head
Speaker 3: of Podcasting. Kristin Powers is our senior executive editor, lavettown
Speaker 3: archive booklips provided by screen Ocean Clips and footage from iHeart.
Speaker 3: Our executive producers are Tyler Klang and nicky.
Speaker 1: Etour Special thanks to Robert Friedman Andrew Martin, Gilda Decale
Speaker 1: Andrew Ressio, Victor Evez and Sean Wenn at Bloomberg. Thanks
Speaker 1: also to Alex Sarmas, Henry Ida, Matt Torre, Paul Manton,
Speaker 1: and the Livetown Historical Society, Nassa County District Attorney Anne Donnelly,
Speaker 1: and Nicole Turso. And thanks to all the young women
Speaker 1: and parents in Levettown who spoke to us as we
Speaker 1: reported the story.