On CivitAI, a site for sharing image generating AI models, users can browse thousands of models that can produce any kind of pornographic scenario they can dream of, trained on real images of real people scraped without consent from every corner of the internet.
The “Erect Horse Penis - Concept LoRA,” an image generating AI model that instantly produces images of women with erect horse penises as their genitalia, has been downloaded 16,000 times, and has an average score of five out of five stars, despite criticism from users.
“For some reason adding ‘hands on hips’ to the prompt completely breaks this [model]. Generates just the balls with no penis 100% of the time. What a shame,” one user commented on the model. The creator of the model apologized for the error in a reply and said they hoped the problem will be solved in a future update.
The “Cock on head (the dickhead pose LoRA),” which has been downloaded 8,854 times, generates what its title describes: images of women with penises resting on their heads. The “Rest on stomach, feet up (pose)” has been downloaded 19,250 times. “these images are trained from public images from Reddit (ex. r/innie). Does not violate any [terms of service]. Pls do not remove <3,” wrote the creator of the “Realistic Vaginas - Innie Pussy 1” model, which has been downloaded more than 75,000 times. The creator of the “Instant Cumshot” model, which has been downloaded 64,502 times, said it was “Trained entirely on images of professional adult actresses, as freeze frames from 1080p+ video.”
While the practice is technically not allowed on CivitAI, the site hosts image generating AI models of specific real people, which can be combined with any of the pornographic AI models to generate non-consensual sexual images. 404 Media has seen the non-consensual sexual images these models enable on CivitAI, its Discord, and off its platform.
A 404 Media investigation shows that recent developments in AI image generators have created an explosion of communities where people share knowledge to advance this practice, for fun or profit. Foundational to the community are previously unreported but popular websites that allow anyone to generate millions of these images a month, limited only by how fast they can click their mouse, and how quickly the cloud computing solutions powering these tools can fill requests. The sheer number of people using these platforms and non-consensual sexual images they create show that the AI porn problem is far worse than has been previously reported.
Our investigation shows the current state of the non-consensual AI porn supply chain: specific Reddit communities that are being scraped for images, the platforms that monetize these AI models and images, and the open source technology that makes it possible to easily generate non-consensual sexual images of celebrities, influencers, YouTubers, and athletes. We also spoke to sex workers whose images are powering these AI generated porn without their consent who said they are terrified of how this will impact their lives.
Hany Farid, an image forensics expert and professor at University of California, Berkeley told 404 Media that it’s the same problem we’ve seen since deepfakes first appeared six years ago, only the tools for creating these images are easier to access and use.
“This means that the threat has moved from anyone with a large digital footprint, to anyone with even a modest digital footprint,” Farid Said. “And, of course, now that these tools and content are being monetized, there is even more incentive to create and distribute them.”