Feed: Slashdot
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Title: Inside the Booming 'AI Pimping' Industry

Link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/11/21/0117...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Instagram is flooded with
hundreds of AI-generated influencers who are stealing videos from real models
and adult content creators, giving them AI-generated faces, and monetizing
their bodies with links to dating sites, Patreon, OnlyFans competitors, and
various AI apps. The practice, first reported by 404 Media in April, has
since exploded in popularity, showing that Instagram is unable or unwilling
to stop the flood of AI-generated content on its platform and protect the
human creators on Instagram who say they are now competing with AI content in
a way that is impacting their ability to make a living. According to our
review of more than 1,000 AI-generated Instagram accounts, Discord channels
where the people who make this content share tips and discuss strategy, and
several guides that explain how to make money by "AI pimping," it is now
trivially easy to make these accounts and monetize them using an assortment
of off-the-shelf AI tools and apps. Some of these apps are hosted on the
Apple App and Google Play Stores. Our investigation shows that what was once
a niche problem on the platform has industrialized in scale, and it shows
what social media may become in the near future: a space where AI-generated
content eclipses that of humans. [...] Out of more than 1,000 AI-generated
Instagram influencer accounts we reviewed, 100 included at least some
deepfake content which took existing videos, usually from models and adult
entertainment performers, and replaced their face with an AI-generated face
to make those videos seem like new, original content consistent with the
other AI-generated images and videos shared by the AI-generated influencer.
The other 900 accounts shared images that in some cases were trained on real
photographs and in some cases made to look like celebrities, but were
entirely AI-generated, not edited photographs or videos. Out of those 100
accounts that shared deepfake or face-swapped videos, 60 self-identify as
being AI-generated, writing in their bios that they are a "virtual model
& influencer" or stating "all photos crafted with AI and apps." The other
40 do not include any disclaimer stating that they are AI-generated. Adult
content creators like Elaina St James say they're now directly competing with
these AI rip-off accounts that often use stolen content. Since the explosion
of AI-generated influencer accounts on Instagram, St James said her "reach
went down tremendously," from a typical 1 million to 5 million views a month
to not surpassing a million in the last 10 months, and sometimes coming in
under 500,000 views. While she said changes to Instagram's algorithm could
also be at play, these AI-generated influencer accounts are "probably one of
the reasons my views are going down," St James told 404 Media. "It's because
I'm competing with something that's unnatural." Alexios Mantzarlis, the
director of the security, trust, and safety initiative at Cornell Tech and
formerly principal of trust and safety intelligence at Google, started
researching the problem to see where AI-generated content is taking social
media and the internet. "It felt like a possible sign of what social media is
going to look like in five years," said Mantzarlis. "Because this may be
coming to other parts of the internet, not just the attractive-people niche
on Instagram. This is probably a sign that it's going to be pretty bad."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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