April 29, 2025
Behind the Badge: Deepfake technology and AI in pornography target children for abuse, coercion, extortion and trauma
The term “deepfake” was coined in 2017 by an internet user who helped spark a particularly onerous development in virtual technology. By using open-source images of celebrities and inserting them into explicit images and video, a new and lucrative industry was launched.
Since then, with the rapid growth of artificial intelligence technology, or AI, it has only become worse. According to Italian technology company Deeptrace, pornography in 2019 accounted for 96 percent of deepfake videos online.
Sadly, children have become prime victims of abuse, enticement, exploitation, coercion and so-called sextortion....
Donna Rice Hughes, who founded Enough Is Enough®, a leading nonprofit in the fight against internet child exploitation, says web sharing, “exponentially grew child sexual abuse material, and with AI you just blew the top off Pandora’s box. And you can’t put it back in once it’s out in cyberspace....”