The Deepfake Videos Used In Porn Could Get More Dangerous

Last December a Reddit user named “deepfakes” posted a pornographic video with the graphically superimposed image of Gal Gadot’s animated face on a porn star’s body. In the video Gadot’s face doesn’t blink, but it was otherwise a reasonably convincing fake. This precipitated a brief but highly predditublicized blitz of amateur graphic artist trolls posting face-swapped videos online.

Now, just about anyone can be in almost anything — and there’s no clear solution any serious consequences of it.

Reddit, Twitter, and other websites banned these “involuntary” pornographic videos. But “deepfakes” videos, as they have come to be known, remain online on mainstream sites more in the humorous variety. Posting videos of Nicolas Cage’s face, for example, is particularly popular.

While celebrities and public figures are rightly concerned about the implications of this technology, its roots are not in the dark corners of the internet.