A NEW WARNING FOR PARENTS

Al apps generating fake nudes make sharenting far riskier than just a few years ago

- BRIAN X. CHEN

Last summer, my wife and I beat the odds of middle age and gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. Thousands of people who follow me on Instagram and other apps have yet to notice.

That's not because I’ve ghosted everyone. I have just opted against posting photos of my child on social media, a parenting move that is becoming increasingly popular because of artificial intelligence.

Parents have debated the risks and benefits of publishing pictures of their children online for decades — about as long as photo-sharing sites have been around. But when social networks were woven into the fabric of society, “sharenting” became the norm. Only a quarter of American parents do not share photos of their children online because of concerns that online predators and companies may harvest their personal data, according to studies.

But parents like me have joined the “never-post” camp because of a more recent threat: apps that can automatically generate deepfake nudes with anyone’s face using generative artificial intelligence, the technology powering popular chatbots.

The so-called nudifier apps are simple and cheap for anyone to use, with some even offering free trials. I took a look at some of them. These apps are being widely used by students in schools, and for victims, having artificially generated nudes of them out in the wild has been as traumatising as it would be if the photos were real.

Though a new federal law makes it a crime to post nonconsensual fake nudes online, there's nothing stopping people from using the nudifier apps, which have proliferated on the web. Dozens of the nudifier sites are raking in millions of dollars a year.

"It's everywhere," said Alexios Mantzarlis, a founder of the tech publication Indicator, which investigated 85 nudifier websites. “Any kid with access to the internet can both be a victim or a perpetrator.”