UPDATE: Reddit has taken the rare step of stepping in and banning deepfakes videos, which have become popular on a dedicated subreddit over the last few months.

After PornHub and several content hosting platforms outlawed the AI face swapping videos, Reddit has also drawn the line at the faked depictions of porn scenes involving innocent third parties.

In an updated set of rules, the community sharing site wrote: “Reddit prohibits the dissemination of images or video depicting any person in a state of nudity or engaged in any act of sexual conduct apparently created or posted without their permission, including depictions that have been faked.”

Original story continues below…

PornHub, the world’s biggest adult entertainment site, has weighed in on the deeply unpleasant ‘deepfakes’ fake celebrity porn craze by unequivocally banning them.

The company told Motherboard it has placed the videos in the same category as revenge porn, in that both are ‘nonconsensual’.

It says any offending videos are in violation of the terms of service and will immediately be removed upon discovery.

“We do not tolerate any nonconsensual content on the site and we remove all said content as soon as we are made aware of it,” a PornHub spokesperson said in a statement.

“Nonconsensual content directly violates our TOS [terms of service] and consists of content such as revenge porn, deepfakes or anything published without a person’s consent or permission.”

PornHub’s site’s stance adds a new layer to the debate, which has intensified in recent weeks with the videos becoming highly publicised in the mainstream media.

Labelling them alongside revenge porn seems to suggest they should be treated in the same way from a legal perspective.

What are deeepfakes?

The clips invariably feature stock video footage of ultra-famous celebrities replacing the faces of actresses in porn scenes. The likes of Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, Daisy Ridley and Sophie Turner have been among those targeted by internet pervs.

Members of the ‘Deepfakes’ subreddit, named after the creator, use machine learning techniques and a free app to create the clips.

Branding them nonconsensual speaks to the enhanced believability of the clips, with fakes becoming march harder to spot.

The likes of Gfycat and Discord, popular hosting sites for deepfakes, have also prohibited creators from posting them using their platforms.

They’ve spoken out against any videos that “impersonates another person or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent your affiliation with a person.”

Meanwhile, Gfycat’s terms and conditions say content is subject to removal if it “infringes any intellectual property or other proprietary rights of any party is subject to removal” or is “unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortious, excessively violent, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive of another’s privacy, hateful racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable.”

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