Apps and websites that use artificial intelligence to undress women in photos are soaring in popularity, according to researchers.
In September alone, 24 million people visited undressing websites, according to the social network analysis company Graphika.
Many of these undressing, or “nudify,” services use popular social networks for marketing, according to Graphika. For instance, since the beginning of this year, the number of links advertising undressing apps increased more than 2,400% on social media, including on X and Reddit, the researchers said. The services use AI to recreate an image so that the person is nude. Many of the services only work on women.
These apps are part of a worrying trend of non-consensual pornography being developed and distributed because of advances in artificial intelligence — a type of fabricated media known as deepfake pornography. Its proliferation runs into serious legal and ethical hurdles, as the images are often taken from social media and distributed without the consent, control or knowledge of the subject.
Can malicious people who steal you retinal and fingerprint duplicate it to unlock whatever it was protecting?
I think it’s only a matter of time, if it hasn’t happened already. When you scan your bio-metric data (fingerprint or whatever) it gets stored somewhere as a pattern of numbers. A clever and talented bad actor could, in theory, recreate or spoof that pattern of numbers in a variety of different ways. Hackers are very good at finding exploits that application coders never thought of. We have all sorts of virtual devices that emulate physical devices. It stands to reason that “virtual fingerprints” could easily be a thing.
Also, bio-metrics are “super easy and convenient” which has a tendency to make people get a little too apathetic / casual about security. And by people I mean everyone involved from the user up through all the layers of engineers and testers to the C-suite.
It’s an over-arching problem with security in general. Good security is both inconvenient and expensive. People want profits and convenience.
I’m going to hold off on using my bio-metrics for as long as I can. Though I can imagine a future where that is no longer possible, unfortunately