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Lori Siegel
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See nutrition facts on Hero Code before we get started. This episode contains talk of sexual abuse and suicide. Please take care while listening.
Joanne Chu
It still feels incredibly weird to tell the story, hearing it come out of my mouth. This is crazy. This sounds like some crazy movie that you would watch on Lifetime or Netflix.
Lori Siegel
Joanne Chu reached out to me after I posted on social media about an investigation I was conducting. She wanted to tell me her story. It was about something she'd found online that made her feel violated, fearful and powerless.
Joanne Chu
I was just bored one evening and I'm just gonna google my name and see what comes up. And so I typed it in and I was just like okay the first few listings was my website or my IMDb page, and then I kept scrolling down, and then I said, what? What, what? What? What is this?
Lori Siegel
Joanne found herself scrolling past dozens of listings on port porn sites with her name in her face, sexually explicit photos and videos of her doing things she'd never done and had never thought of doing.
Joanne Chu
It's like my face on very disturbing and graphic content. I apologize if it's too graphic, but it's, you know, Joanne Chu, slut whore, or Joanne Chu, impregnated by five black men, Something along the lines of that. So I was like, I can't look. I don't want to look at this. I just can't.
Lori Siegel
Joanne works in events in the LA area, but she's also a visual artist and an actor. She's gotten some commercials and TV show roles, but you probably wouldn't recognize her on the street from anything you've watched on Netflix or Lifetime. Someone just found images of Joanne online and used AI Deepfake technology to recreate her likeness in pornographic photos and videos.
Joanne Chu
I have, like, less than 3,000 followers, but it doesn't matter if you're famous or you're not. I mean, just looking at Mr. Deepfakes, it's like they have a whole alphabetized database. They probably have content on every single actor or actress out there. It doesn't make it okay.
Lori Siegel
Mr. Deepfakes is why Joanne contacted me. I was investigating the site, which at the time was the largest deepfake porn site on the Internet. And when you look at it, you do see names and faces you probably know. But here was Joanne, a regular person whose level of fame or followers didn't even come close to celebrity status, and she was being targeted by Deepfakes. When Joanne asked around, the response she got was that deepfake porn was almost to be expected. The more success you had.
Joanne Chu
I told a couple of my other actress friends, and they model, and some of them have a lot more followers than I do. They have a bigger platform, they are higher up on the food chain. And I talked to them and they said, unfortunately, this is going to happen the further you go in your career. But if you want, just go ahead and post on your social media saying something along the lines of, this is what I found. This is not me. This is not something that I would ever do. If you see something, it's fake, because it's just. At least it's out there on the record. You're speaking up against this. Should people find this online? Because at one point, when I Typed in my name. My stuff wasn't coming up first anymore. It was all of this content that's damaging to your reputation.
Lori Siegel
Joanne followed the advice, but it didn't stop the videos from appearing on Mr. Deepfakes and other porn sites.
Joanne Chu
The content was multiplying. There was, on one particular website, there was an album of just me, and it was like close to 2,000 photos and videos.
Lori Siegel
And it gets worse for Joanne. The person posting these videos, he. He contacts her, and he starts sending her multiple messages on social media, even calling her by her childhood nickname, Joe. Now, this is just one example of a message Joanne received, and we're going to use AI to read these messages.
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I made up your personality and surrounded it with AI Flesh. I am a real man that desires your body and isn't afraid to say so. Not your real one, though. That one is old and faded, but your AI body is forever young. Joe, I am making you immortal.
Joanne Chu
I just found it really creepy that he was doing that. And it was making me question, is this. Is this somebody that I know? If it is someone I know, is it. Are we in any danger? Are they going to look up where my mom lives or something? Because that's what my main concern was. So it's made me very, very distrustful of people in general.
Lori Siegel
Joanne's mental health takes a toll. She's anxious, stressed, worried for her safety, and she can't shake the intense feeling of violation by this new kind of digital abuse.
Joanne Chu
You don't have ownership over your body anymore. It's just. It felt like it was being done to me physically. I didn't say okay to this. I, like, I don't even know you, and you're out here possibly making money off of this. How is this okay? How is it treated? The same as if, you know, someone put their hands on us and assaulted us. How is this not treated in the same way? The violation of consent? It's just, yeah, I felt like out of my body for a really long time.
Lori Siegel
The abuse being done to Joanne was digital in nature, but the impact was fundamentally human. The shame, humiliation, the fear and loss of control. It's something I heard from victims over and over again. Sites like Mr. Deepfakes allow people to take photos of real people without their consent and create graphic, often violent pornography made and shared for pleasure or profit. You're going to hear many of these stories over the course of this series, and Mr. Deepfakes wasn't the only place that this was happening, but it was the biggest among them and by far the most dystopian website I'd ever seen. Every day, Mr. Deepfakes exposed thousands of women in the most vulnerable way. And yet the person behind Mr. Deepfakes was anonymous. And honestly, that just didn't sit right with me. Welcome to Searching for Mr. Deepfakes, a four part series on my investigation into the person behind the biggest and most influential influential deep fake porn site on the Internet.
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Martha Stewart
when Kohler, the global design leader in luxurious kitchen and bath products, came to me and said, martha, we need an ambassador for our timeless, elegant, durable cast iron products. I said, I'm in. Now let me see the factory. Weeks later I was suited up in coveralls and work boots walking through their Kohler Wisconsin Cast Iron foundry. I stood next to the molten iron furnace, saw the hand applying enamel and touched the gorgeous finished products waiting to be sent out into the world. Since 1883, Kohler cast iron products have been forged and finished by the incredible craftspeople right in Kohler, Wisconsin. I'll tell you, I gained a newfound respect and appreciation for Kohler's cast iron craftsmanship. So now I'm lending my discerning stamp of approval to my most beloved Kohler cast Iron products for their durability, beauty and timelessness. Shop my Kohler Cast Iron favorites curated on Kohler.com bring the warmth, character and enduring style of these timeless products into your kitchens and bathrooms. As the Kohler Cast Iron Ambassador, I say, long live Cast Iron.
Nicole Boucher
Do we want to declare it as an obsession?
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Martha Stewart
when Kohler, the global design leader in luxurious kitchen and bath products, came to me and said, martha, we need an ambassador for our timeless, elegant, durable cast iron products. I said, I'm in now. Let me see the factory. Weeks later I was suited up in coveralls and work boots walking through their Kohler Wisconsin Cast iron foundry. I stood next to the molten iron furnace saw the hand applying enamel and touched the gorgeous finished products waiting to be sent out into the world. Since 1883, Kohler cast iron products have been forged and finished by the incredible craftspeople right in Kohler, Wisconsin. I'll tell you, I gained a newfound respect and appreciation for Kohler's cast iron craftsmanship. So now I'm lending my discerning stamp of approval to my most beloved Kohler cast iron products for their durability, beauty and timelessness. Shop my Kohler Cast Iron favorites curated on Kohler.com bring the warmth, character and enduring style of these timeless products into your kitchens and bathrooms. As the Kohler Cast Iron ambassador, I say long live Cast Iron.
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Lori Siegel
Like I'm. I would rather be upset. Someone's gotta be obsessed with it, right? Recently I sat down in the studio with two of my key producers and longtime collaborators to talk deepfakes. When my obsession with deepfake pornography began, I would say it must have been 2022, 2023. Remember ChatGPT launches November 2022. All everybody is talking about is artificial intelligence. And it's so exciting. And we can now do these wild things that we can never do because of AI. And I just remember someone telling me about this site called Mr. Deepfakes. I've been a technology journalist for 15 years at CNN, 60 Minutes, and now my own company, mostly Human Media. And I have to say I have seen some pretty wild stuff in that time. But typing Mr. Deepfakes into my browser, I was blown away. I was immediately looking at public facing women, celebrities, politicians in these incredibly graphic sexual videos, doing things they would never do. They were AI generated. But honestly, you almost couldn't even tell the difference. And I didn't know it then, but learning about Mr. Deepfakes was gonna send me on the most insane investigation of my career. My obsession was about to spiral out of control. And spiraling right alongside me were Nicole and Roxie.
Roxie Hunt
Hi, I'M Roxy. I'm a documentary producer and director and filmmaker. And I met Laurie doing our show on CNN called Mostly Human. We had a lot of adventures, including attending a engagement party for someone to a robot, going into sex doll factories where they were installing AI into their heads. And another highlight maybe is preparing Lori digitally for her own death. What about you, Nicole?
Nicole Boucher
Well, I met Laurie at 60 minutes and it was during the time of COVID so it was a very interesting moment in time. But I think, you know, I met Laurie at a time where I was really considering leaving traditional journalism and found kind of a kindred spirit in terms of thinking outside the box and looking at stories and the deep human impact of and potential for impact that these stories can have. And so reconnected and started working at Mostly Human.
Lori Siegel
Years later, soon after I found out about Mr. Deepfakes, I introduced Roxy and Nicole to it. And it didn't take long for us to see that this wasn't just a site for passive, sexually explicit entertainment. Here's Nicole, who dug deep into the site.
Nicole Boucher
I think the big thing that really made this site feel dangerous is that it wasn't just a video hosting platform. It ultimately was the largest centralized deepfake community for AI porn. And on the site there were a number of things you could do. You can watch graphic videos of these celebrities, these influencers, these public figures. You can swap services via Marketplace. You can actually learn to create deepfakes. You can discuss the tech advancement, and you can join these forum chats with other users that really help to normalize this practice. I mean, what you really can see on the site as we dug in was like the future being built in real time. Like it was this idea of your wish is AI's command. And it really felt like a breeding ground for this kind of new dystopian reality.
Lori Siegel
Mr. Deepfakes had this messaging section, forums where users could chat with each other. And it was on these forums that we could see this community, this army of deepfake creators coming together and growing. And we're going to share some of the messages we found there using AI voices.
Anonymous Deepfake Forum User
Hello, I only want NSFW, deepfakes of my streamers, YouTubers, TikTokers, obviously influencers. There will always be some who will not do this kind of thing. In addition to the fact that some know that we want to see them like this. And thanks to these technologies, it will now be possible.
David Kennedy
Hi there.
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I'm new to the forum and the deepfake thing in general. By now I've started with experimenting deepfakes with Deepface Lab RX580 Nitro plus 8 gigabytes. And I'm getting good results in these forums.
Lori Siegel
What we saw was a training ground, tools and guides, teaching people how to deepfake someone. There were all these face sets, like training data of women's faces so that these users could take that and make their own videos. When they came across a snag, something goes wrong. They just brought it to the group and found the support and help they needed to make the kind of deepfakes they wanted.
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I'm impressed at the quality and quantity of content. I'm mostly into VR and pov. I'm also amazed at the amount of resources to teach how to make deepfakes.
Lori Siegel
Again and again in these messages we saw this growing disconnect where people use this really technical language to talk about all the ways they can violate women.
Anonymous Deepfake Forum User
Wouldn't it be great to run a machine learning program to enhance a model's tits? Frame to frame motion would need to be considered.
Lori Siegel
There was also a financial incentive built in. Not only was the site built to make money, but users could too. Here's Nicole again.
Nicole Boucher
So Mr. Deepfakes was also a place where people were making money and profiting off of these images. The site is running ads and so makes ad revenue. And there's also a marketplace on Mr. Deepfakes where users can connect with people who can make them for a fee, commission. A specific deepfake you can watch pay per view deepfakes that people are posting. Some users have subscription services, some users
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are selling courses, special deal on courses and deepfake commissions 50% off. Anything goes. Niche YouTuber with 10,000 sub. It's all game.
Nicole Boucher
And so a big part of this community is also profiting off of this new form of abuse.
Lori Siegel
But there was plenty that was for free. You could watch most videos on the site without paying. And there were users who would just take requests and turn around a video because they wanted to. There did appear to be some rules and regulations for how to use the site and who you could deepfake. The person had to be a public figure with a certain number of followers. The person also had to be over 18. And there was some evidence on the site that when users crossed these lines, there were consequences, but not always.
Nicole Boucher
There were some people who were posting underage celebrities and so they ended up making like a blacklist for that. But when you actually dig into the forums, what you can and can't do and what people are actually doing are not the Same thing.
Anonymous Deepfake Forum User
Hi, this is awesome technology. Is it bad? I want a deepfake of my sister in law.
Nicole Boucher
There may be rules and regulations, but you see this trickle down of people wanting to take this to people they know in real life and really normalizing that.
Joanne Chu
Right.
Roxie Hunt
If people are asking, it would be great to do this for my sister in law. Obviously sister in law doesn't necessarily have hundreds of thousands of followers and it's
Nicole Boucher
technically something that wouldn't be allowed on the site. But one trend that I found as well on Mr. Deepfakes throughout is that they would really only change something if someone really pressed and pushed for it.
Lori Siegel
It's almost like I couldn't have this woman, but with AI I can. The focus was primarily famous public facing women naturally out of reach. But what we saw in these forums was this desire to use this technology for anyone. It's how someone like Joanne Chu can be a victim of deepfake porn or how any of us can.
Various Advertisers (Mint Mobile, Kia, etc.)
I'm interested in finding someone who could make some realistic looking fakes of women I know and like in real life. I think it would be fun and hot to view them naked and engaged in sexual activities. Otherwise I'd never be able to see them in or that they themselves wouldn't even do. Really interested in hearing from someone who could help and hopefully has a similar mindset about these sort of things.
Roxie Hunt
Can I just ask. And something that I was actually confused about, I guess always with Mr. Deepfakes was the bodies that the faces are being put onto, are they real women as well? And then also is there a mix of completely AI generated bodies?
Nicole Boucher
The early sort of version was basically porn stars. So there's. There are actually chats of like how do we match these models? So how do I match this celebrity? I want to do this to. With a model who would look realistic with them. Basically the model initially was a real sex video and putting someone's face as if they performed that act.
Lori Siegel
It's like. And I think the thing that I looking at is like you were reducing these people to data sets. Oh, you want this data set doing this. Cool. You want this doing this. Oh, and also I'm going to make money off of it too. Like these training manuals, training on women's faces. Like I just. It's unbelievable. And that is like deepfake technology at its scariest. I think at its peak there were 17 million visits to Mr. Deepfakes on a monthly basis. We didn't just see a website, we saw a breeding ground for a whole New type of abuse. It was about a lack of consent online. It was about a world where AI controls us and we lose our agency. Where these tools can humiliate someone, tarnish their reputation or bully them online with just a click. Now it might start on Mr. Deepfakes, but the danger behind it is that's not where it ends. From the messages we saw, users didn't really think what they were doing was wrong, but they seemed to recognize that others wouldn't exactly agree and they wanted to protect it.
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Let's keep track of proposals to outlaw deepfakes in the US and around the world. To stay informed, we should keep a vigilant eye on relevant legislation. Guys watch for proposed bills and discuss how we can continue to do what we do. You should all be using VPNs and doing fakes on separate computers than your main one. Don't forget to ditch Gmail emails, switch to encrypted providers, only pay for VPN with crypto. Just like piracy is illegal, they can't do much unless you get caught or expose yourself. For this reason, don't accept payments with PayPal or anything that can identify you. Everyone should be using Bitcoin or Monero.
Lori Siegel
So I'm looking at this site and I just can't help but think how on earth is this allowed to exist and who's behind it?
Anonymous Deepfake Forum User
I was never into the fake scene, but I love technology. AI fascinates me and I just happened to learn about deepfakes on YouTube. Glad to have people come here to learn and experiment.
Lori Siegel
We did find an original Mr. Deepfakes. One person, an admin with the handle dpfks, whose footprint was all over the site from the very beginning.
Anonymous Deepfake Forum User
Regardless of why you're here, we're glad to have you in the growing community.
Lori Siegel
Is this the creator of this dystopian AI generated website where women are violated every single day, where their likeness is used to make highly graphic videos without their consent for payment and pleasure. And here's the thing that bothered me. The person behind this is exposing so many women, but yet he would like to be anonymous to me. The ability for this to operate in the dark and become so influential was the problem. Not only did it give him and his site power, it protected him and the site and the users from real world consequences. So it wasn't just about Mr. Deepfakes, it was about everything. That this site represented a new AI dystopian reality that none of us wanted to opt into. For that reason, I believe that Mr. Deepfakes was one of the most dangerous men on the Internet.
Anonymous Deepfake Forum User
This tech is pretty new, but it definitely has way more uses than making porn. But making porn with the tech is kind of fun. Laughing Face
Vital Proteins Advertiser
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Every sale comes down to a single second, the one between buy now and maybe later. PayPal is built to help your business win that moment with a checkout experience that feels certain, reliable and familiar. With a global two sided network and hundreds of millions of buyers who already know us all to keep you in control. However, buying happens next. New markets, new AI powered selling services, a whole new agentic era where you decide how your business will show up and stand up. PayPal is built to help your business come out ahead. We're built for payments, built for growth, built for Agentic PayPal open built for all business. Visit PayPalOpen.com to get started. That's PayPalOpen.com
Martha Stewart
when Kohler, the global design leader in luxurious kitchen and bath products came to me and said, Martha, we need an ambassador for our timeless, elegant, durable test iron products. I said, I'm in now. Let me see the factory. Weeks later I was suited up in coveralls and work boots walking through their Kohler, Wisconsin cast iron foundry. I stood next to the molten iron furnace, saw the hand applying enamel and touched the gorgeous finished products waiting to be sent out into the world. Since 1883, Kohler cast iron products have been forged and finished by the incredible craftspeople right in Kohler, Wisconsin. I'll tell you, I gained a newfound respect and appreciation for Kohler's cast iron craftsmanship. So now I'm lending my discerning staff of approval to my most beloved Kohler cast iron products for their durability, beauty and timelessness. Shop my Kohler Cast Iron favorites curated on Kohler.com bring the warmth, character and enduring style of these timeless products into your kitchens and bathrooms. As the Kohler Cast Iron Ambassador, I say long live cast iron.
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Joanne Chu
If the stuff that was happening in the video was done to me in real in real life, by this point I would most likely be dead or permanently disfigured.
Lori Siegel
Joanne Chu had accidentally discovered she was the victim of AI Deepfake pornography. Graphic, sexually explicit videos featuring her face, her name and often her professional information were multiplying on Mr. Deepfakes and other porn porn sites. And then the videos jumped into the mainstream.
Joanne Chu
These videos started showing up on YouTube and so I was, I sent a complaint into YouTube and they sent me this email that came back and it said, this is not a violation of your privacy and da da, da, da. So that's when I got really upset and I posted it. I posted a reel online. For the last several months, there has been a creator, or maybe there are multiple who have taken my face, my name, my professional information, against my consent and created over 400 pieces of deep fake corn. A couple days ago, I discovered that they made a YouTube channel of just me and promptly filed a complaint with YouTube. Early this morning, they emailed back and they said, this is not a violation. How is this not a violation? Someone has taken my name, my face, my professional information, against my consent, and is creating horrible, disgusting, degrading content posting it all over the Internet. Make this make sense.
Lori Siegel
Joanne was feeling stuck. She had tried the public plea. She tried appealing to the sites themselves, but the abuse wouldn't stop. Joanne thought maybe this was something she could handle herself. She even became her own investigator, trying to understand who was behind this.
Joanne Chu
The first username that popped up that was posting my content was Ron Riperton. And then he would sometimes post as John Johnnerson. So he liked to use alliterating names and it was just very bizarre. But after I had posted my statement online a couple days later, he posted a video on YouTube and it says, apologies to Joanne Chu. I never meant for you to find this. I didn't mean to hurt you. Here is a collection of images celebrating your beauty that are lewd the, the content that he was putting up on YouTube was almost more disturbing than pornography. Like, oh, Joanne Chu in a schoolgirl uniform. Joanne Chu and a Harry Potter or something.
Lori Siegel
Joanne tried professional help. She consulted with a lawyer, but she soon learned that it was essentially the Wild west legally. So she connected with someone who described himself as an ethical hacker to help get the videos taken down. He got to work, but soon ran into a roadblock, especially with sites like Mr. Deepfakes.
Joanne Chu
He was sending them the takedown notices, and he was telling me, unfortunately, Mr. Deepfakes does not respond to takedown notices. This cannot. This can't be legal. You know, people that are saying, oh, what's the big deal? It's not real. We know it's not real, but this is not okay to have. Just knowing that somebody's doing this and they're making money off of it and they're damaging your reputation, they're putting your name on it, and they're circulating it everywhere to God knows how many people. And it's only going to keep getting bigger and bigger. How. How can we be okay with that? It's. I mean, it feels like very much. It feels like it's being done to me physically. So that's why I kind of get really upset when people are just, you know, just, just. It'll blow over. They'll. They'll stop eventually and they'll start making content about someone else. That's not okay either.
Lori Siegel
It was devastating listening to Joanne's story just because of that helplessness that she felt. How were there no laws to protect her? How could a site like this just keep going unchecked and unregulated? The story might be new with artificial intelligence, but to a degree, it was actually familiar. This is the story where tech is new, laws are slow to catch up, and women are the first victims. Back in 2015, I reported on another cyber trend that threatened women's autonomy online. Revenge porn. This was non consensual pornography. Everything from intimate photos hacked from an unknowing victim's computer to a private video taken by a couple and then made public after the breakup. This material would then be uploaded to the dark web, put on websites devoted to shaming women, sold or bartered like trading cards and sometimes used to blackmail victims. This is what happened to Paris Hilton back in 2004, when an intimate video of her was released without consent. What was so disturbing to me about revenge porn at the time was how there was just no system in place to protect victims. No laws that can help. Once the photos or videos made it online. It was nearly impossible to stop the spread. There's also the emotional and mental stigma similar to deepfake pornography. I heard the same thing over and over again. Shame, humiliation, unfair judgment of the women at the center of these incidents, and folks saying, there's nothing you can do, you just have to live with it. The fact that revenge porn was often labeled a scandal rather than abuse bothered me. And here we are nearly a decade later, and women are even more vulnerable to this type of abuse. You no longer need an intimate video to be involved today. All you need to do is exist. Because with artificial intelligence, our most intimate features can be mimicked and used against us.
Joanne Chu
The fact that this has happened to me, this has happened to other people. We have to speak up because it's not just for us, we're doing it for everyone else. Because I know for some other, for other people, it's absolutely not safe for them to do anything about it. And it's much too, it's too heavy to carry on yourself. And I know a lot of people, they, they, they end their own lives over this. And that's not something that is acceptable to me. That acceptable to me. That's not something that can happen.
Lori Siegel
So what has allowed a site like Mr. Deepfakes to function was that it was operating in the dark. Even though people like Joanne were being victimized by it. Not enough people were aware or even knew that this digital threat was coming for them. We didn't even have the vocabulary. Neither did friends or loved ones. So it was incredibly isolating. But then in early 2024, something happened to crack that facade.
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AI is being used to create pornographic
Lori Siegel
images, and it was Taylor Swift, the latest victim of this. Taylor Swift was deep faked. And the world suddenly woke up to this new form of abuse. Sexual Deep fake photos of Taylor Swift went viral on social media. One of the fake images of Swift reportedly shared over 47 million times on X in what advocacy groups say is a form of sexual abuse, sexually explicit deepfakes of Taylor Swift go viral all over the Internet. It was so bad on X that the company made the decision to temporarily block searches of Taylor Swift on the social media platform just to stop the deepfakes from circulating. But this isn't a fix. I mean, I remember thinking, if one of the most powerful women in the world essentially has to be silenced to be protected against this type of abuse, what hope do the rest of us have? I realized that now was the time to do something about Mr. Deepfakes. This wasn't just a professional decision either. This was personal. This battle, of course, is so much bigger than Mr. Deepfakes. But I knew that we had to start by uncovering the man behind the mask. And so that's when I decided we gotta find him.
David Kennedy
We gotta figure out a hacker code name.
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Lori Siegel
Do you have any ideas?
David Kennedy
Oh, man, put me on the spot for a hacker name. Let's see.
Lori Siegel
David Kennedy is a cybersecurity expert and one of the best hackers in the United States. He and his team have protected the US from cyber threats from Russia and China. And I thought if anyone could help me find someone who can't be found, it could be David. So I invited him to our office in New York to start this investigation. Okay, so I want to talk about, like, why you're here today. First of all, thank you for coming in.
David Kennedy
Of course. Absolutely.
Lori Siegel
This is weirdly personal to me, and maybe we can do a little therapy session trying to figure out why. But, like, I just think deepfake pornography is like this huge threat coming our way. And, like, I don't even think we realize how big of a threat this is. I mean, not just analyze threats. How big is it?
David Kennedy
You know, it's interesting because you look at defects not just from a pornographic perspective, but also what they're doing in the news and being able to interpret and release information for individuals. Right. And there's some laws coming out specifically around deepfakes, around election cycles and things of that effect, where It's a misdemeanor $1,000 fine, maybe a year in prison, but nothing around defects when it comes to pornography. Right. And, you know, there are some likeness laws, but if you're able to figure out who that person is that's running the sites, you may have a case maybe for defamation or something to that effect. But how are you going to find them? The government really isn't moving towards this, and they're really not talking much about it. But this stuff has been going on for years, and these sites are huge. And the technology continues to get better and better and better, and there's a lot of innovation happening in this area, unfortunately.
Lori Siegel
So I called you a couple of weeks ago and I was like, you know, I just think that this AI Deepfake threat is horrific and it's coming especially for women and children. And I think there's this guy, Mr. Deepfakes, who's anonymous, doing this, and I'd, like, love help finding him. And you said yes. Talk about call a friend. I mean, that's insane. Like, why are you gonna help me?
David Kennedy
You know, for me, I have a young daughter. You know, I can't imagine something like this happening to that. Right. It's a. For me, my whole career has always been trying to make the world a safer place and helping other people. Right? And to me, this is taking advantage of people that are helpless and something that we can do to hopefully combat it. And with technology moving so fast, we're supposed to be here in the cyber industry to help law enforcement, help the federal government get up to speed with this type of stuff. And I don't think we're doing enough to be able to do that. So for me, it's a personal mission to try to figure out how best can we make an impact to stop these types of things from happening. Because I don't want it to happen to friends, family, anybody. It's a horrible situation. You see, what's going on with revenge porn and these other areas is just absolutely disastrous for these individuals and horrible, and no one should be put through that.
Lori Siegel
The thing that just like pisses me off more than anything is like, the guy behind it would like to be anonymous. Like, he is exploiting all of these women, yet he would like to remain anonymous. And I think that's where I got in my head that I'm like, well, we should find him and we should talk to him and we should really ask him some challenging questions. What is your take on Mr. Deepfake?
David Kennedy
You know, this whole Mr.DFake site, one of the largest deepfake sites out there, and the reason why it became extremely popular is because of the simplicity of the site. And it continues to get better. And this all spawned a number of years ago in a Reddit forum.
Lori Siegel
This Reddit forum that David's talking about, it's from 2017, and it's where early deepfake porn first emerged. It started as a community on Reddit, where users used technology to put celebrity faces on porn. When Reddit banned the practice in 2018 and flagged it as non consensual abuse, the website mrdeepfakes, originally called dpfks.com at its launch, emerged that same month, seemingly in direct response to the ban.
David Kennedy
And so we know just a little bit of information about him, not anything else other than, you know, mail, United States. So that's about all we know.
Lori Siegel
While Anonymous, a man claiming to be from the US and behind Mr. Deepfakes had given an interview to the BBC. In it, he made an eerie prediction for the future, saying we'd reach a Point where anyone could be deep faked as the tech grew better. But he also didn't see anything wrong with what he was doing. He said it was a fantasy because it was fake. Can you tell me, like, what you guys are gonna do? Like, you have a whole team of, like, good guy and gal hackers who are actually going to help us. That's pretty incredible. Can you, like, give us a sense, like, what. What are they gonna do?
David Kennedy
You know, we have some of the top hackers in the country, so one, one of the main methods that we leverage is what we call open source intelligence gathering. And there's little artifacts and data and things that we can piece together where maybe he messed up or maybe when he was setting up a website, you know, he didn't put on privacy right away. There are a lot of things that we can do to comb through breach data, looking at, you know, registered emails, associated different passwords, things that can start to piece together this puzzle. And we have a whole other team dedicated to what we call counterintelligence, which is researching the dark web, what information's out there, being able to infiltrate different groups, and they're really good at finding people and who individuals are. And we've gone against some of the largest nation states out there to some of the biggest organized crime groups. I have a feeling we'll have some good success here, at least to be able to try to figure out who this individual is and how they're operating, where they're operating out of, and maybe ask some hard questions.
Lori Siegel
Should I be concerned, like, for my own safety, going after Mr. Deepfakes?
David Kennedy
You know, unfortunately, when you're doing this type of work, you always run that risk. You know, you don't know how somebody's going to react. You know, we want to take as much precaution as you possibly can, try to figure out who they are before we, you know, start publishing or exposing any data and, you know, try to take an approach that is safe for everybody in this and try to protect everybody with this. But, you know, we are doing some good work here to help a lot of other folks. To me, that's usually worth it.
Lori Siegel
In the search for Mr. Deepfakes, I had Roxy and Nicole and now David and his team of hackers. But I also needed some new recruits. In all my years covering tech, I knew that social media could also be used for good. So I put a call out to see if anyone out there knew anything about Mr. Deepfakes. I want to tell you the story of a man that I believe is one of the most dangerous men on the Internet that you just haven't heard of yet. He goes by the name Mr. Deepfakes. Ironically, this man would like to remain anonymous after he's exposed so many people. And my question is, why? So I'm putting my money where my mouth is. I am going to track down Mr. Deepfakes and I have a lot of hard questions I want to ask him. Speaking about my investigation so publicly was a gamble. This might actually spook the man behind Mr. Deepfakes and make it even harder. Harder to track him. But a part of me was just hoping that someone would contact me with his name and number and it would be as easy as that. And at the very least, going public was a way to hold myself and Mr. Deepfakes accountable. I talked about this with Nicole and Roxy.
Roxie Hunt
Any hesitation when you posted?
Lori Siegel
Yeah. The second you put yourself out there to do something like this, because we didn't know. I mean, is this guy dangerous? Is the person or people or community going to be very angry? Right. Like, I have been doxxed before. I've been a Q drop when I covered QAnon. Right. Where your info's put out there and people kind of decide to make your life shitty online.
Nicole Boucher
I think a thing that came up a lot was this disconnect between the online world and the real world impact that this was having. And so somebody, and many somebody sitting behind their computer screen thinking that this wasn't that big a deal. But the reality is that our world has become more and more this online world. And so I think it really was the victims and the people being impacted by this and the potential that this is only going to grow as a problem that really motivated us to do this.
Lori Siegel
So it was official. We had launched our search to find the man behind Mr. Deepfakes. David Kennedy and his team were already digging around the Internet for digital clues. And my fishing expedition to social media, that shout out to help me might have actually paid off because we got a bite.
Nicole Boucher
Do you know why this person reached out to you?
Lori Siegel
So he saw our TikTok video and he reached out and he's like, I think we got him. Six weeks after sending this call out on social media, I get a dm. It's from someone in the Netherlands who's claiming to have found Mr. Deepfakes. But looking at his profile, I was a bit skeptical. He only had a handful of followers. There wasn't really a profile picture and I honestly wasn't sure if he was legit. But I was Definitely intrigued. So I immediately called Nicole. So I went from TikTok, saw the message in my inbox which said, hold on. Hi. Did you found me the owner? Did you found the owner of Mr. Deepfakes? Because we have found him, exclamation. And he said we only sent one message to him and he started removing all his personal social media accounts. Facebook, Instagram, Mrdeepfakes.com was also offline for 20 hours when we confronted him. So it's, I mean, it sounds promising. I was desperate to get the tipster on the phone, but it was the middle of the night in Europe so he agreed to call the next morning. And that gave Nicole and I 12 hours to start our vetting. And if this all checked out, we'd have to move quickly or else Mr. Deepfakes could go even further underground. I think the goal would be as soon as we get his name, to try to do everything humanly possible to try to get out there by early next week. Next week on searching for Mr. Deepfakes. I guess my question, which is the thing that has been on my mind for the last nine or ten months, who is Mr. Deepfakes? I will show you a picture. Find searching for Mr. Deepfakes part two in the mostly Human podcast feed. If you've been targeted by sexually explicit deepfakes, we want to hear from you. Email us@helloostlyhuman.com and for resources, visit Beyond Mr. Deepfakes. That's Beyond MrDeepfakes.com for resources. If you or a loved one needs support, text HOPE to 64673 or call or text 988. Mostly Human is a production of iHeart podcasts and Mostly Human Media. Searching for Mr. Deepfakes is a multi year investigation in partnership with BFD and 1111 Media. It's produced and edited by Lori Siegel, Nicole Boucher, Lauren Hanson, Abu Zafar, Roxie Hunt and Tony Castle. Sound design and mixing by Derek Clements and Abu Zafar. If you want to see our short form vertical docuseries on Mr. Deepfakes, go to Mostly Human Media on TikTok or Paris Hilton's TikTok channel. Find us all on socials @mostlyhumanmedia. You can also watch Mostly Human on our YouTube page and if you want to get in touch, please email us@hellostlyhuman.com we'd love to hear from you. Oh, and please rate and review the show and share it with your friends. See you next week.
David Kennedy
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Joanne Chu
Oh, no.
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Lori Siegel
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Lori Siegel
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Date: June 11, 2026
Host: Laurie Segall | Guests: Joanne Chu, Nicole Boucher, Roxie Hunt, David Kennedy
In this powerful investigative episode, Laurie Segall launches a multi-part series delving into the dark underbelly of deepfake pornography, focusing on the world’s largest deepfake porn site: Mr. Deepfakes. Through firsthand survivor stories, behind-the-scenes reporting, and a call to action, the episode exposes the widespread human toll and the disturbing normalization of nonconsensual deepfake abuse. Laurie’s team turns their investigative lens toward tracking down the anonymous site operator — a person Laurie labels “one of the most dangerous men on the Internet.”
Content note: The episode discusses sexual abuse, non-consensual pornography, and suicide.
How She Discovered She Was a Victim (02:11–03:14)
Emotional Toll and Stalker-Like Behavior (05:08–06:29)
Laurie's Investigation Begins (07:01–08:18)
A Community That Encourages and Profits (17:47–21:54)
Nicole Boucher breaks down how the site operates as more than a content host. It’s a marketplace, training ground, and normalization space for deepfake creators.
The forums served multiple purposes:
Despite asserted “rules” against underage or non-famous people, users routinely attempted to fake people from their real lives (21:29–21:54).
Blurring Boundaries & Accessibility (22:14–23:41)
Creator-user dynamic centered around “I couldn’t have this woman, but with AI, I can.” Technology removes the barriers of access and consent.
Deepfake methods evolved from swapping celebrity faces onto porn actors’ bodies to nearly undetectable, completely fabricated bodies.
Laurie’s summary:
“You were reducing these people to data sets... And that is deepfake technology at its scariest.” [23:41]
Estimated peak: 17 million monthly visits to Mr. Deepfakes [23:41]
Organized Resistance and Hiding (24:42–25:26)
Helplessness in the Face of Nonconsensual Porn (31:02–34:11)
Historical Echoes: The ‘Revenge Porn’ Era (34:11–36:31)
Call to Action (36:01–36:31)
Recruiting the Team: Cybersecurity and Crowd-Sourcing (38:22–43:25)
Public Callout and First Lead (43:53–46:19)
Joanne Chu on the horror of deepfakes:
“If the stuff that was happening in the video was done to me in real life, by this point I would most likely be dead or permanently disfigured.” [30:34]
On digital vs. physical violation:
“You don’t have ownership over your body anymore... It felt like it was being done to me physically.” — Joanne Chu [06:29]
Laurie on the normalization of digital abuse:
“This is the story where tech is new, laws are slow to catch up, and women are the first victims.” [34:11]
On the Mr. Deepfakes community:
“You can discuss the tech advancement, and you can join these forum chats with other users that really help to normalize this practice.” — Nicole Boucher [17:47]
Forum user advice on hiding from law enforcement:
“Everyone should be using Bitcoin or Monero.” [24:42]
The episode is urgent, immersive, and human-centered. Laurie balances investigative rigor with raw vulnerability, both from her interviewees and herself, highlighting the monumental gap between technological progress and ethical, legal, and societal safeguards—particularly for women.
The episode concludes with a cliffhanger — a breakthrough lead on Mr. Deepfakes’ identity from a tipster in the Netherlands, setting the stage for the next installment of the investigation.
Resources and Support:
To be continued in Part 2...