Reddit (Finally) Bans Deepfake Communities, but Face-Swapping Porn Isn't Going Anywhere

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society. Photoshopping celebrities' faces onto nude photos has been around for years. Now, new technology has spawned a more sinister upgrade to that practice--and it has online communities scrambling to keep nonconsensual adult content off their platforms. This week, Reddit, Twitter, and Pornhub became the latest social platforms to ban deepfakes--fake porn videos in which artificial intelligence superimposes celebrities' (and other people's) faces onto the bodies of adult film actors. With free and easy-to-use facial recognition technology, users can create videos that are nearly indecipherable from reality.