MP Maria Miller is calling for a parliamentary debate on whether we should ban digitally generated nude images.
It comes as a new service is gaining popularity on social media that allows users to undress women in photos, using Artificial intelligence.
One analyst revealed that the website had more than five million visits in June alone.
Celebrities, including an Olympic athlete, are among those who have been “nudified” by their users.
DeepSukebe’s website promises users it can “reveal the truth hidden under clothes”.
Launched in 2020, this company seems to be shrouded by mystery and has yet to issue a statement as of now. The BBC reached out for comment but received no reply, which leads many people wondering who is behind such an innovative concept?
Currently thriving on the dark corners of Twitter, ” DeepSukebe ” is an artificial intelligence-based program that promises to turn any man’s fantasy into reality.
In a blog post, the developers say that they are working on an even more powerful version of their tool.
Ms. Miller told the BBC she believes it is time to consider a ban of such tools.
She stated “Parliament needs to have the opportunity to debate whether nude and sexually explicit images generated digitally without consent should be outlawed, and I believe if this were to happen the law would change”.
“It should be an offence to distribute sexual images online without consent to reflect “the severity of the impact on people’s lives”.
“If software providers develop this technology, they are complicit in a very serious crime and should be required to design their products to stop this happening”.
For the last six years, Ms. Miller has campaigned about so-called revenge porn – when nude or sexually explicit images are distributed without consent.
“At the moment, making, taking or distributing without consent intimate sexual images online or through digital technology falls mostly outside of the law, It should be a sexual offence to distribute sexual images online without consent, reflecting the severity of the impact on people’s lives.”
The MP believes that there is a need to introduce the issue in the forthcoming Online Safety Bill.
Cease (Centre To End All Sexual Exploitation) told BBC News they also believe nudification tools need to be tackled within this bill.
“The law is inadequate in this area,” said Vanessa Morse, the chief executive.
She went on to say “Technology which is designed to objectify and humiliate women should be shut down, and porn sites which profit from mass distribution of these images must be forced to proactively block their upload”.
When speaking of the victims’ plight, she added “the fact that the onus is currently on victims “often traumatised and humiliated” to have such images removed from the internet was simply not fair”.
Nudifier tools can be found on the dark web, and are not new. DeepNude was launched in 2019 but retracted following a public backlash that occurred quickly after its release.
They acknowledged that the probability of misuse was “very high” and added, “The World Isn’t Ready for This Controversial Tool”.
It is no surprise that many people often produce clumsy and sometimes laughable results, however, the website’s new algorithm puts it years ahead of the competition, according to an analyst.
The BBC interviewed Ivan Bravo, a developer behind one of the many nudification tools available online.
Ivan Bravo acknowledges that this creation is unethical “mainly in the way it is currently used and the way they advertised this as a tool to ‘nude your friends”.
“However, we don’t live in a perfect world and people have always been looking for ways to do this, so it was only a matter of time before such a technology came into existence”.
He added that the fact this technology was only able to remove women’s clothing is sexist.
“Personally, I would also like to have a version for nude men and even fictional characters like anime, so that all people can enjoy or experiment with this kind of adult entertainment.
“The goal is to find what kind of uses we can give to this technology within the legal and ethical framework”.
