• by Laurie Sullivan , January 12, 2024

Bing, Google, and DuckDuckGo search engines are under fire for serving nonconsensual artificial intelligence (AI) deepfake pornography at the top of some search query results.

The backlash surfaced after an article by NBC News highlighted concerns related to the accessibility of pornography driven by AI technology. 

Deepfake pornography can integrate a person’s face into a real pornographic scene. A famous woman’s face may be exchanged with an adult star’s face, making it appear that the famous woman is nude or engaged in a sexual act.

NBC News conducted a search on 36 popular female celebrities, using the combination of the person’s name and the word “deepfakes.” Bing and Google, in nearly all cases, served nonconsensual deepfake videos and images at the top of search results.

Deepfake images and links to the videos appear in the top Google results for 34 of searches and the top Bing results for 35.

Google is aware of the problem and is working to add safeguards in Search results, a Google spokesperson told NBC News. The spokesperson added that its ranking systems are designed to avoid shocking people with unexpected harmful or explicit content.

Results for Bing included fake nude photos of former teen Disney Channel female actors. Some images use pictures of faces that appeared to be taken before they became an adult.

It’s important to note that NBC News found the deepfake pornographic images after turning off Bing’s and Google’s safe-search tools features that are intended to protect users from being served explicit content.

Quick tests conducted by the publisher Neowin proved that Bing doesn’t show explicit image results in default setting while searching for the same combination, but it does link to websites with inappropriate content or tools to create AI deepfakes.

Google does show explicit images in the default setting, but the images are blurred and shown in full only after the user is notified of the explicit nature of the picture. The user must willingly click on the link to see the images.

DuckDuckGo pulls search results from Bing, so it makes sense why NBC News found some results on the search engine, which focuses on protecting the privacy of its users.

Last week at CES 2024 in Las Vegas, Replica Studios, an artificial intelligence (AI) voice technology company, and The Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) addressed a number of issues around audio.

On Tuesday, the two introduced an AI voice agreement to protect and provide professional voiceover artists with an avenue to “safely” explore employment opportunities for their digital voice replicas based on AI technology.

The agreement would allow AAA video-game studios and other companies working with Replica to access top SAG-AFTRA talent.