Civitai is an online AI model marketplace that recently introduced a “bounties” feature to encourage deepfakes of real people.
According to 404 Media, whoever creates the most believable AI model of a person will receive a virtual currency called “Buzz” which can be used to buy things with actual money.
To no one’s surprise, most of the bounties listed on the site are asking users to recreate the likeness of popular celebrities and social media influencers, the majority of whom are female. However, there are numerous requests for private individuals with no outstanding online presence.
The Civitai platform is considered the seventh most popular for AI generation at the time of this post, according to Andreessen Horowitz. 404 Media was able to source images sent via bounty request on a private person with social media accounts in mere moments.
Even after a single Civitai user declined the bounty and threatened to take legal action, the request was fulfilled with several images uploaded to the site. However, they were non-sexual. Some state and local governments, like Virginia, have started updating revenge porn laws with punishments of up to a full year in prison for this kind of behavior.
Civitai itself says the bounties should not be used for the purposes of creating non-consensual AI-generated sexual images of real people. Of course, it’s still happening, and the use of the company’s text-to-image feature makes it too easy.