The U.S. Department of Justice announced Friday that it has seized the CFAKE.com and SOCFAKE.com websites, which allegedly hosted nonconsensual AI-generated nude images and videos of women, in what appears to be the first publicly announced domain seizure under the TAKE IT DOWN Act.
According to the DOJ, the sites shared sexually explicit digital images, or deepfakes, depicting politicians, celebrities, athletes, musicians, and even royalty from multiple countries.
"According to the probable cause affidavit supporting the seizure warrants, the digital forgeries were made to appear to be sexual images of famous women, including politicians, first ladies of multiple countries, royalty, journalists, television presenters, athletes, entertainers, and others," reads the DOJ announcement.
A deepfake is AI-generated or AI-manipulated media that depicts a person saying, doing, or appearing in ways that never occurred. Deepfake images and videos can be created from existing photos, videos, or audio recordings and are commonly used to generate nonconsensual nude content, impersonation scams, phishing attacks, and cryptocurrency fraud.
The CFAKE.com and SOCFAKE.com domains were seized on Thursday by the DOJ and Homeland Security Investigations after a federal judge found probable cause that they were being used to violate the TAKE IT DOWN Act.
