NEW DELHI, Sept 25: A Spanish town is in deep distress because of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The naked images of about 20 to 30 minor girls of the town are doing rounds in the social media without the knowledge of the victims.
The police believe that some local youths using an AI application had created the manipulated photos by superimposing the innocent faces of some local girls onto the “bodies of other people” in other images.
Medial reports said AI-generated naked images of young girls in Almendralejo, some as young as 11 and up to 17 years old, have been circulating on social media platforms without their knowledge or consent.
Notably, the pictures were mostly taken from the girls’ social media accounts, and then processed by an AI app that created a fake image of the person without clothes. Almost 20-30 girls aged 11 to 17 have lodged complaints as victims.
María Blanco Rayo, the mother of a 14-year-old, said “One day my daughter came out of school and she said ‘Mum there are photos circulating of me topless.’ I asked her if she had taken any photos of herself nude, and she said, ‘No, Mum, these are fake photos of girls that are being created a lot right now and there are other girls in my class that this has happened to as well.”
The mother of another victim girl said the morphed pictures on the social media look so realistic and quite unsettling for everyone, especially her 14-year-old daughter. “The culprits are not aware of the damages they are causing. Using images to create this disgusting material and distributing them is a very serious crime,” she said. “Girls, don’t be afraid to report such acts. Tell your mothers. Affected mothers, tell me so that you can be in the group that we created,” she added.
The local law enforcement is now dealing with 11 complaints from victims, all of whom are minors. The parents of the affected children have also set up a support group to help them through the ordeal.
The police have identified at least 11 local boys believing them to be involved in either the creation of the images or their circulation via the WhatsApp and Telegram apps. They are also looking into a claim that an attempt was made to extort one of the girls by using a fake image of her.
A spokesperson from the local police said that the people responsible for these ”manipulated photos of underage girls”, superimposed their innocent faces onto the “bodies of other people” in other images. The media reports said these deep fake nude images were created using an AI application called ‘ClothOff.’
(Manas Dasgupta)