Massive tech companies including Google, Apple and Discord are allowing people to quickly sign up for malicious “stripping” websites that apply AI to remove clothing from real photos to make victims appear “naked” without their consent. More than a dozen such deepfake sites have been using the tech companies’ login buttons for months.
WIRED’s analysis found that 16 of the largest undress and “nudify” sites apply login infrastructure from Google, Apple, Discord, Twitter, Patreon, and Line. This approach allows people to easily create accounts on deepfake sites — offering them a semblance of legitimacy — before paying for credits and generating images.
While bots and websites that create unwitting intimate images of women and girls have existed for years, their numbers have increased with the introduction of generative AI. Such “stripping” abuses are alarmingly high widespreadallegedly with teenage boys creation photos of their classmates. Tech companies are slowly coming to grips with the scale of the problems, critics say, with websites appearing high in search results, paid advertising promoting them on social media and the applications that appear on them app stores.
“This is a continuation of a trend that normalizes sexual violence against women and girls by Big Tech,” says Adam Dodge, an attorney and founder of EndTAB (Ending Technology-Enabled Abuse). “Login APIs are convenience tools. We should never make sexual violence convenient,” he says. “We should be putting up walls around access to these apps, and instead we’re giving people a drawbridge.”
The login tools WIRED analyzed, which are implemented via APIs and common authentication methods, allow people to apply existing accounts to join deepfake sites. Google’s login system appeared on 16 pages, Discord appeared on 13, and Apple’s on six. The X button was on three pages, and Patreon and the Line messaging service appeared on the same two pages.
WIRED does not name websites because they allow for abuse. Several of them are part of wider networks and ownership by the same people or companies. Login systems were used despite the technology companies broadly having rules that state developers cannot apply their services in a way that could harm, harass or invade people’s privacy.
When contacted by WIRED, spokespeople for Discord and Apple said they had removed developer accounts linked to their sites. Google said it would take action against developers if it found its terms were violated. Patreon said it prohibits accounts that allow for the creation of sexually explicit images, and Line confirmed it was investigating but said it could not comment on specific sites. X did not respond to a request for comment on how its systems were used.
Hours after Jud Hoffman, VP of Trust and Safety at Discord, informed WIRED that sites had been blocked from accessing its APIs for violating its policies programming policyone website undress posted on a Telegram channel that authorization via Discord was “temporarily unavailable” and claimed it was trying to restore access. The undress service did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment on its actions.
Rapid expansion
Since the advent of deepfake technology end of 2017the number of non-consensual intimate videos and images being created has increased exponentially. While videos are harder to produce, creating images using “undress” or “nudify” sites and apps has become common.
“We need to be clear that this is not innovation, this is sexual exploitation,” says David Chiu, a San Francisco city attorney who recently opened a lawsuit against websites offering undress and nudify services and their creators. Chiu says the 16 websites targeted in his office’s lawsuit had about 200 million visits in the first six months of this year. “These websites are engaged in horrific exploitation of women and girls around the world. These images are used to intimidate, humiliate and threaten women and girls,” Chiu said.