Tens of millions of people are using AI-powered'nudify' apps, according to a new analysis that shows the dark side of the technology. More than 24 million people visited nudity AI websites in September, which digitally alter images, primarily women, to make them appear naked in the photo using deep-learning algorithms. These algorithms are trained on existing images of women which allows it to overlay realistic images of nude body parts, regardless of whether the photographed person is clothed. Spam ads across major platforms are also directing people to the sites and apps increased by more than 2,000 percent since the beginning of 2023. The rise in nudity-promoted apps is particularly prevalent on social media, including Google's YouTube, Reddit, and X - and 52 Telegram groups were also found to be used to access non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII) services.

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, the social network analysis company Graphika found. 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.

The "news broadcasters" appear stunningly real, but they are AI-generated deepfakes in first-of-their-kind propaganda videos that a research report published Tuesday attributed to Chinese state-aligned actors. The fake anchors -- for a fictious news outlet called Wolf News -- were created by artificial intelligence software and appeared in footage on social media that seemed to promote the interests of the Chinese Communist Party, US-based research firm Graphika said in its report. "This is the first time we've seen a state-aligned operation use AI-generated video footage of a fictitious person to create deceptive political content," Jack Stubbs, vice president of intelligence at Graphika, told AFP. In one video analyzed by Graphika, a fictious male anchor who calls himself Alex critiques US inaction over gun violence plaguing the country. In the second, a female anchor stresses the importance of "great power cooperation" between China and the United States.

Their voices were stilted and failed to sync with the movement of their mouths. Their faces had a pixelated, video-game quality and their hair appeared unnaturally plastered to the head. The captions were filled with grammatical mistakes. The two broadcasters, purportedly anchors for a news outlet called Wolf News, are not real people. They are computer-generated avatars created by artificial intelligence software.

A pro-China propaganda campaign that's been bashing the US on social media created fake followers with the help of AI-generated images. Since June, the campaign has been posting English-language videos critical of the Trump administration on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, according to research company Graphika, which has been tracking the group's activities. Graphika dubs the campaign "Spamouflage Dragon." And like other propaganda activities, the pro-China group uses fake accounts to share and post comments on its content to help it gain wider circulation. However, Graphika noticed something odd with the profile photos belonging to these fake accounts: In some cases, the headshots appear to be the work of an AI program designed to create artificial human faces. At first glance, the profile photos look legitimate.

The era of disinformation driven by artificial intelligence is here. For years, pundits have warned that the dawn of smarter software in the form of artificial intelligence would make it easier. Propaganda campaigns driven entirely by robotic trolls are still a long ways off but researchers at the disinformation-tracking firm found that a far-right media group used AI-generated profile pictures to build up a network of fake Facebook users and pages found in one of the largest troll takedowns in Facebook history. On Friday, Facebook pulled down a network of 700 pages with 55 million followers run by The Beauty of Life, a media outlet linked to the Epoch Media Group. Researchers at the disinformation-tracking groups Graphika and the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab found that "dozens" of the fake accounts found in the network taken down by Facebook had avatars that had been generated by AI software as part of a campaign Graphika dubbed Operation Fake Face Swarm.