Mar 01, 2024 19:30:00

Who is behind the AI porn app 'ClothOff' that strips clothes from photos of girls being sexually assaulted one after another?

With the development of AI, ``AI porn apps that strip clothes from photos of real women and make them naked'' have

appeared , and in the United States and Spain, children are already using AI porn apps to take nude photos of girls who are their classmates. Incidents have occurred in which people create and use these to bully and intimidate. A major British daily newspaper, The Guardian, reported the results of an investigation into the person behind the AI porn app ' ClothOff ' used in these incidents.

Revealed: the names linked to ClothOff, the deepfake pornography app | Artificial intelligence (AI) | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/feb/29/clothoff-deepfake-ai-pornography-app-names-linked-revealed

One day, Miriam Al-Adib, who lives in the town of Almendralejo in southern Spain, was shown a ``deepfake nude image of herself'' by her 14-year-old daughter. 'I was shocked when I saw it. The image was so real...If I didn't know my daughter's body, I would have thought the image was real,' said Al-Adib, who posted the image on a porn site. I'm worried about it being reprinted.

This image is one of dozens of nude images that someone created using an AI porn app targeting female students at Almendralejo, and has been circulating for weeks in a WhatsApp group created by other students. Some of the girls whose deepfake nude images were circulated have refused to go to school, suffered panic attacks, been blackmailed, and been bullied, and prosecutors have said that the They are also considering prosecuting children who created and downloaded pornography.

In addition, in the American state of New Jersey, far from Spain, an incident occurred in which male students used an AI porn app to generate and share nude images of female students. It is known that the same AI porn app called 'ClothOff' was used in both cases in Spain and the United States.

Police begin investigation after high school boy shared AI-generated ``fake nude photo of female high school classmate'' in group chat - GIGAZINE

ClothOff claims that ``anyone can use AI to remove the clothes of the person in the photo,'' and users who declare themselves to be over 18 years old can use their smartphones to spend credits they have earned. Deepfake nude images can be generated.

ClothOff's operators have maintained anonymity for about a year since the app was released, and they have edited their voices when giving phone interviews to the media and used AI to create facial photos of people claiming to be the CEO. It was also generated. The photo below is the face of a fictitious CEO that is thought to have been generated by AI.

For a long time, details about the people behind ClothOff were kept under wraps, but The Guardian claims to have conducted a detailed investigation into ClothOff officials over a six-month period and identified people believed to be involved with the app. Masu.

First, if you follow ClothOff's traces, you will end up in Belarus and Russia, but before that you will pass through front companies based in Europe and the United Kingdom. Screenshots seen by The Guardian show that a Telegram account named Dasha Babicheva from the Belarusian capital

Minsk is conducting business for ClothOff, including applying to banks, changing websites, and discussing business partnerships. got it. It was confirmed that an Instagram account with the same name shared the same image and listed the same phone number as Dasha's Telegram account, but the Instagram account was made private shortly after The Guardian contacted them. Her phone number has also been removed from her profile.

An investigation of social media accounts also identified a 30-year-old man named Alexander Babicheva as Dasha's older brother. ClothOff directs job applicants to the email address of a website called 'AI-Imagecraft,' which is a copy of a website with a nearly identical name called 'A-Imagecraft,' owned by Mr. Alexandre. It is said that it is a thing. The Telegram account that contacted the business partner as the founder of ClothOff is called 'Al', which is reminiscent of Mr. Alexander's nickname.

Furthermore, photos posted by Alexandre and Al on their Telegram accounts show that they both 'stayed at the same hotel in Macau on January 24th, and in the same room at the same hotel in Hong Kong on January 26th.' It turns out that. This suggests that at least Mr. Alexandre and Mr. Al are close enough to travel together, or that they are the same person.

However, in response to inquiries from The Guardian, Alexandre denied any relationship with ClothOff and claimed that he also does not have a sister named Dasha. He also denied that the Telegram account containing his phone number was his, and did not respond to subsequent inquiries.

According to The Guardian, ClothOff used a company called Texture Oasis, registered in London, to disguise the transfer of funds. Texture Oasis claims to sell products for use in architectural and industrial design projects, but the text on its website is copied from another legitimate company, and the people listed as employees are also He said he didn't know anything about Texture Oasis. The Guardian's investigation also found no connection between ClothOff and the people listed as Texture Oasis employees, suggesting they simply copied the names from random locations.

In addition, a LinkedIn account in the name of Mr. Alexander stated that he was an employee of GGSel, an online gaming marketplace for Russian gamers to avoid sanctions from Western countries. The Guardian found a number of other pieces of evidence of a relationship between ClothOff and GGSel, including code for ClothOff's website being uploaded to the GitHub account of a person named Alexander Jarman who claimed to be an employee of GGSel. I am.

In fact, after The Guardian began inquiring about the relationship between GGSel and ClothOff, several LinkedIn accounts that were listed as working for GGSel removed references to GGSel or changed their names. About.

ClothOff told The Guardian that it is not affiliated with GGSel or anyone named in this article, and that its app cannot 'process' images of people under 18. However, he did not clarify how the images were generated in the Spanish incident.