Twitch has finally released a statement on deepfake pornography and updated its usage policy after an incident in January involving several high-profile streamers.
The year 2023 has started with a new type of very serious scandal. Indeed, the Atrioc streamer went live in his live on a website, which featured explicit and faked images of female streamers, including Maya Higa and Pokimane. This appears to be the same site we were discussing a few months ago that was seeing its user base grow alarmingly.
To prevent this from happening again, Twitch released a lengthy statement regarding its stance on the controversy and on what the company calls “non-consensual exploitation synthetic images” or NCEI. ” In January, a brief incident of ‘deepfake porn’ was streamed live on Twitch “, can we read in the post. ” This moment has caused immense distress to those whose images have been used without their consent, and sparked a flurry of conversations about the dangers that explicit AI-generated imagery can pose. “.
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Twitch tightens the screw around shared content containing deepfakes
The message then explains that anyone who intentionally shares this non-consensual adult content faces immediate indefinite suspensioneven in the event of a first offence. This will be the case regardless of the context in which the content is shownwith the site adding that users will still be banned if they show “deepfake” sites for “ express their indignation or disapproval” with regard to content.
So this is a big step in the right direction for the platform. Previously, Twitch’s stance on deepfakes was extremely limited. She only mentioned them in the context of the “ sharing artistic or doctored content to abuse or degrade another person “. However, Twitch did prohibit the ” streaming or downloading content containing depictions of actual nudity » and threatened creators to ban them immediately in case of « sexual violence and exploitation “.