Global Courant 2023-04-21 00:42:25
China is tackling deepfakes at home and benefiting from them abroad.
Deepfake apps from China-based developers have been downloaded millions of times in the US and remain available on app stores even after China introduced strict laws this year to regulate deepfake videos on its own internet.
The apps allow Chinese developers to capitalize on data and dollars brought in through America’s largely unregulated tech market, while US lawmakers have focused on other targets, such as TikTok. That research hasn’t expanded to other China-based apps, such as online marketplaces Shein and Temu, which popular in the US and other parts of the world.
Deepfakes are manipulated media, often created with artificial intelligence technology, in which faces, appearances and voices have been changed. The technology has improved in recent years and has been used to create viral videos, some warning about the technology’s ability to create misinformation.
But most of all, deepfake technology has fueled an online economy focused on creating fake pornography. Sensity, an Amsterdam-based company that detects and monitors AI-developed synthetic media for industries such as banking and fintech, found that 96% of deepfakes are sexually explicit and feature women who did not consent to their creation.
An NBC News review of free deepfake apps on Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store found more than 17 deepfake apps available for download from companies around the world, including Russia, Ukraine, UK, US, Italy and China.
Some of the apps reviewed by NBC News, such as the popular FaceApp from Cyprus and Facee from China, do not provide features that allow for the creation of pornographic videos. Such apps aim to modify images of faces using preset filters. But other apps specifically market their abilities to create non-consensual deepfake pornography.
One of the China-based apps, FaceMagic, is displaying sexually explicit ads that read “Create deepfake porn in an instant” on the most popular deepfake porn website, according to a review of the ads by NBC News. It has been downloaded more than 2.4 million times as of May 2021, according to data from Apptopia, a company that tracks the app market.
Another China-based deepfake app, FaceMega, was recently removed from the Apple and Google app stores after NBC News found it posted more than 260 ads on Facebook portraying Emma Watson’s likeness in a sexually suggestive manner.
Those apps would almost certainly run into trouble China’s new deepfake rules, which entered into force in January. The rules prohibit creating deepfakes without the consent of the people whose likenesses are manipulated, and they require deepfakes to be labeled as AI-generated.
The US has no such federal laws, although some states impose civil penalties for making non-consensual porn and deepfakes that depict political disinformation. Some privacy activists have pushed for new rules around deepfakes, but most politicians have focused on TikTok instead.
“In the same way that we are way behind on privacy regulation, I think we are still in the early stages of determining what regulation we should have around deepfakes,” said Samir Jain, the policy director for the Center for Democracy and Technology, a non-profit organization that advocates for digital rights and free speech.
Concerns about foreign access to US user data through apps have coalesced around China and TikTok in recent years. TikTok’s critics have argued that it poses a particularly pressing security threat because China could force it to release data about its US users.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew told a congressional hearing last month that ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, was a private company and not controlled by the Chinese government.
“TikTok has never shared US user data or received a request to share it with the Chinese government,” he said in prepared remarks. “TikTok would also not honor such a request if one were ever made.”
China, which says it will “resolutely resist” any forced sale of TikTok in the US, says it takes data privacy and security very seriously and the US has provided no evidence that TikTok threatens its national security.
“The Chinese government has never asked and will never ask any company or individual to collect or provide data, information or intelligence abroad in violation of local laws,” said Mao Ning, spokesman for the foreign ministry last month.
A request for comment to the Chinese embassy in the US was not answered.
Other countries have taken broad steps to address data privacy concerns, as well as concerns about the proliferation of deepfakes. The European Union has strict privacy rules that it has enforced against many major tech companies, including Amazon, Meta and Google. The EU has also created rules designed to force major technology platforms to do so limit the spread of deepfakes.
None have gone as far as China with its recent deepfake rules.
“As a hub for AI development, China is increasingly trying to export its own vision of what AI governance means,” said Michael Karanicolas, executive director of the UCLA Institute for Technology Law & Policy. “Despite all the attention that Chinese apps are disrupting the US economy, China says we need rules on this.”
Mary Anne Franks, a law professor and the president of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, a nonprofit that fights non-consensual porn, said the commercial model for nearly every app operating in the US consists of selling user data and that those legal vulnerabilities overlap with the legal gray area in which the deepfake economy can flourish.
Deepfake porn websites are a recently growing phenomenon, with search interest at an all-time high early this year.
“If the powers-that-be had paid attention to this crisis and expected that one day the technology wouldn’t be crude and indistinguishable, we wouldn’t be in this position,” Franks said.
Franks said there are legitimate complaints about TikTok, just like many other apps. Deepfake apps also collect user data, which can be shared and sold with anyone.
However, that information is not particularly difficult to find. And banning TikTok wouldn’t change much.
“If China is interested in that information, they can buy it freely on the secondary market,” Karanicolas said. “You can ban an app, but it doesn’t really affect the wider problem.”
