Arizona women sue over alleged AI deepfakes made from stolen social media photos

Three Arizona women have sued several people and companies, alleging that their images were taken off their social media pages and fed into artificial intelligence (AI) models to generate deepfakes of them. They claimed that the suspects involved used the models to generate their explicit images and profit from them.

The lawsuit filed at the Maricopa County Superior Court in Arizona targets an Instagram account that has posted multiple videos of women, advertising them as AI models to make money. The plaintiffs, whose names are being withheld for privacy reasons, noted that some of the AI-generated images were created using their social media photos without prior consent. One of the victims mentioned that she is now being looked at in a way that does not sit well with her, simply because of the circulating images.

Arizona women initiate lawsuit over AI-generated content

The lawsuit names three defendants from Maricopa County in Arizona, including Beau Schultz, the owner of the Instagram account. The lawsuit also names 50 other John Does and several companies that were allegedly created or used to run the business. The plaintiffs are being represented by Nick Brand of Donlon Group and Cristina Perez Hesano from Pere Law Group.

According to Brand, the defendants, who are likely from Arizona, created blueprints to teach other men and boys how to make these so-called AI influencers that are then nudified from fully clothed images. He added that the defendants use these generated deepfakes to set up a subscription-based pornographic website where they share erotic messages back and forth with customers. Brand noted that the issue looks wider than he had imagined before he was assigned the case.

In the Arizona lawsuit, the defendants instructed their customers to avoid using popular or well-known influencers and instead use micro-influencers to reduce the risk of legal troubles. “I can’t believe how naive I was to what women are suffering through as technology advances,” Brand said. According to one of the victims, only strict legislation can be used to prevent these ills and prevent more women from being targeted in similar schemes.

Payment platform denies wrongdoing

Another victim mentioned that the public should not be able to use artificial intelligence to wreak this much havoc, noting that those who use it are targeting someone’s sister, mother, friend, and co-worker. Meanwhile, one of the companies listed in the lawsuit, Phyziro, a payment processing platform, said the accusations are materially false. The company claimed that it is an Interactive Computer Service provider under § 47 U.S.C. 230.

“The company shall not be treated as the publisher, speaker, or author of any content or transaction generated by third-party users or autonomous agents. We further maintain no duty to monitor the specific downstream intent or illicit activities of users or users-of-users. The Member and Manager are immune from liability for ‘Asymmetric Knowledge’ events where AI agents, users, or users-of-users act outside of the Manager’s direct visibility or programming.”

The company mentioned that it only serves as a provider of neutral tools and infrastructure, highlighting that its liability is strictly limited to the technical operability of the stack. In its statement, the company notes that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act clears it of any wrongdoing. However, there is currently a bipartisan effort in Congress to revoke the law, which would force platforms to be accountable for content posted on or connected to their websites.

This development from Arizona also comes at a time when the chatbot Grok has been under heavy criticism by the global population. Governments across the country accused the platform of not keeping guardrails in place to check the activities of the chatbot, leading it to create AI-generated deepfakes of explicit images of women and children. While some countries have issued warnings to the platform, others have temporarily halted its access until work is done to correct the issue.

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