How the UK, Australia, the US, South Korea, and the EU are dealing with explicit AI deepfakes, as legislation around the world remains largely untested
Omny Miranda Martone was not surprised when computer-generated images and videos purporting to show their naked body started to appear on social media in January. X: @postdiscipline and @ft X: Rakesh Bhandari / @postdiscipline : Is this one more way in which AI enables what @JohnZerilli explores as privacy violations from inference? We had thought we kept aspects of ourselves private but they can be inferred from our data exhaust. Clothes don't prevent hyperrealistic inferences about our nude bodies. @ft : In September alone, there were more than 32mn visits globally to ‘nudify’ or ‘undressing’ sites. Activists hope that legislation could force Big Tech platforms to make it harder to access, advertise and monetise these products https://www.ft.com/... [image]
Context & Ripple Effects
Explicit deepfake pornography had already become entrenched on major porn sites in earlier coverage of rampant deepfake porn, and the supply side widened as AI undressing services surged in popularity in 2023 with undressing apps and sites gaining users.
This story marks the policy response catching up with that distribution problem: the UK, Australia, the US, South Korea and the EU are pursuing measures, but their practical reach remains unproven. It follows a US debate in which state-level protections existed while advocates sought broader coverage amid calls for a federal US law.
First-order effects
- People targeted by synthetic intimate imagery face a patchwork of emerging legal routes rather than a settled, consistently tested remedy across the named jurisdictions.
- Platforms, advertisers and operators connected to nudify products face greater scrutiny over whether they make such services accessible, promotable or monetisable; activists are explicitly seeking to raise those barriers.
Second-order effects
- Compliance choices will increasingly turn on intermediaries—not only the creators of explicit deepfakes—putting distribution, advertising and payment pathways at the center of enforcement debates.
- Uneven and untested rules across jurisdictions may leave victims and platforms navigating different standards for removal, liability and redress, reinforcing pressure for clearer cross-border approaches.
Third-order effects
- If enforcement extends beyond individual uploaders to the commercial infrastructure around synthetic abuse, explicit-deepfake governance could become a broader test case for laws aimed at AI-generated nudes and platform accountability.
- The durable policy question is whether legal remedies can keep pace with low-friction image-generation services; the article shows that legislative adoption alone has not yet answered that question.
The trend: Explicit AI deepfakes are shifting AI governance from abstract content rules toward accountability for the services and platforms that enable their creation, reach and revenue.