Deepfake nudify technology is no longer limited to rough image manipulation. According to WIRED’s reporting, the ecosystem around explicit AI-generated abuse has become easier to use, more realistic, and more commercial.
The central risk is straightforward: a single photo can now be turned into explicit images or short videos without consent. The people most exposed to that abuse, the source says, are women and girls.
From single photos to explicit video
WIRED describes one explicit deepfake generator that can turn a photo into an eight-second explicit videoclip. The site offers 65 video “templates,” including “undressing” videos and more graphic sexual scenarios. Each video costs a small fee, and AI-generated audio costs more.
The site includes warnings telling users to upload only photos they have consent to transform with AI. WIRED says it is unclear whether those warnings are backed by any checks.
This matters because the technology lowers the effort required to create abuse. Earlier sexual deepfakes required more technical knowledge. The source says that, since the end of 2017, the tools have moved from more difficult processes toward services that are more accessible, more realistic, and easier to use.
Image-to-video models now typically need only one photo to create a short clip. That change moves the risk from specialized communities into interfaces that can be used with very little friction.
A growing deepfake nudify market
WIRED reviewed more than 50 “deepfake” websites, which likely receive millions of views per month. Nearly all of them now offer explicit, high-quality video generation, and many list dozens of sexual scenarios women can be depicted into.
The article also points to Telegram as a major part of the wider system. Dozens of sexual deepfake channels and bots have regularly released new features and software updates. Those updates include different sexual poses and positions.
One deepfake service promoted a “sex-mode” in June last year with the message: “Try different clothes, your favorite poses, age, and other settings.” Another said that “more styles” of images and videos would be coming soon and that users could “create exactly what you envision with your own descriptions” using custom prompts to AI systems.
That range of features changes the nature of the abuse. As independent analyst Santiago Lakatos put it, “It's not just, 'You want to undress someone.’ It’s like, 'Here are all these different fantasy versions of it.’ It's the different poses. It's the different sexual positions.”
Platforms, bots, and infrastructure
The ecosystem is not only a collection of consumer-facing websites. WIRED reports that some larger “deepfake” websites have strengthened their position and now offer APIs to other people creating nonconsensual image and video generators.
Lakatos says these services are “consolidating by buying up other different websites or nudify apps” and adding features that let them act as infrastructure providers. In practical terms, that can allow more tools to appear around the same underlying capabilities.
Telegram’s role shows the scale. WIRED found more than 1.4 million accounts signed up to 39 deepfake creation bots and channels on Telegram. After WIRED asked Telegram about the services, the company removed at least 32 of the deepfake tools.
A Telegram spokesperson told WIRED: “Nonconsensual pornography—including deepfakes and the tools used to create them—is strictly prohibited under Telegram’s terms of service.” The spokesperson also said Telegram removes content when it is detected and removed 44 million pieces of content that violated its policies last year.
Why open models matter
The source connects the growth of these services to broader advances in generative AI. Stephen Casper, a researcher working on AI safeguards and governance at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says: “This ecosystem is built on the back of open-source models.”
Casper explains that in many cases “it’s just an open-source model that has been used to develop an app that then a user uses.” That creates a difficult governance problem: the visible product may be a website, bot, or app, but the capability can come from widely available photo and video generators.
Henry Ajder, a deepfake expert who has tracked the technology for more than half a decade, says the current tools are far beyond a crude synthetic strip. He describes “a much higher degree of realism” and “a much broader range of functionality.”
Ajder also says the services are likely “making millions of dollars per year” and calls the trend “one of the worst, darkest parts of this AI revolution and synthetic media revolution that we're seeing.”
The human cost of nonconsensual intimate imagery
The source is clear that the harm is not abstract. Victims and survivors of nonconsensual intimate imagery, including deepfakes and other nonconsensually shared media, are nearly always women.
False images and nonconsensual videos can cause harassment, humiliation, and the feeling of being “dehumanized.” WIRED notes that explicit deepfakes have been used to abuse politicians, celebrities, and social media influencers. They have also been used by men to harass colleagues and friends, and by boys in schools to create nonconsensual intimate imagery of their classmates.
Pani Farvid, associate professor of applied psychology and founder of The SexTech Lab at The New School, says: “Typically, the victims or the people who are affected by this are women and children or other types of gender or sexual minorities.” Farvid adds: “We as a society globally do not take violence against women seriously, no matter what form it comes in.”
An Australian study led by Asher Flynn interviewed 25 creators and victims of deepfake abuse. The study concluded that three factors could affect prevention and response: increasingly easy-to-use deepfake tools, the normalization of creating nonconsensual sexual images, and the minimization of harms.
The result is a technology problem, a platform problem, and a social problem at the same time. The tools are becoming easier to access, the outputs are becoming more convincing, and the people targeted are left facing the consequences of abuse that can be generated in moments.