And that is its worst part.

We learned years ago that, thanks to the powers of software, we may “finally have (virtual) sex with ANYONE you know”. Then things went even worst.

The list of online “services” that we could really do without has recently (for me, at least) seen another not-wanted-at-all, unwelcome addition: “nudification”.

That, I just read, would be the act of taking an image and stripping the subject nude using AI-powered software:

Nudification is (more details on Medium):

• disgusting
• already “absolutely a threat to girls”, with tens of millions of “users”, because it is infinitely cheaper and more easily accessible than sex robots
• actively encouraging proselitism, with sites where “users can publicly share a personalized referral link and earn rewards for each new person who clicks on it”
• to add insult to injury, even grossly “unfair” (yes, probably not the best term, but words really fail me here, sorry), when it “obviously doesn’t work on men”

Nudification: coming soon to a woman NEAR you

Finally, and likely the most disturbing part of the whole thing, there is the issue of who, exactly, nudification was set up for, and makes it so successful.

These days everybody can find online tons of high-quality pictures of nude women of all possible shapes, sizes, ages, colors, ethnicities and attitudes, without any need for nudification.

If nudification is so successful, that is, it must be because it makes it easy to get realistic nude pictures of women for whom no nude picture already exists: that is, nude pictures of one’s friends, neighbors, coworkers, relatives, students, teachers…

The easy, but big questions

The Medium post asks:

1. Why are websites like this even allowed to exist?
2. What can be done about this scary Internet trend?

With respect to the first question… if it is asked literally, that is if the expectation is to make this practice actually impossible online, the obvious answer, no matter how unsatisfying, is easy to give:

These and many other disgusting websites are “allowed to exist” because it is impossible to exterminate them without making even bigger damage, that is without switching off the whole Internet of today, and replacing it with something much worst.

If the question is “how do we make these things as hard to find and use online as possible, and their use or offerings a crime?” then is a totally different issue, that falls in the “hard, but feasible” category, and whose hardest part may be international cooperation.

Don’t get your hopes too high though, especially for the “use” part. Discovering and proving (in ways valid in courts, obviously) that someone installed nudification software on their home computer for “personal use”, without ever distributing the result, would be basically impossible to do on a large scale.

A realistic answer to the second question, instead, may be:

“almost nothing, of course, in the short term. The real solution to crap like this is education, which takes many years to work even when done right, and around it a society that makes life bearable without this crap, that is just a bit harder to do. But forcing search engines and internet providers to not host or list certain “services” could significantly reduce the size of the problem (NOT canceling it, see first question).”

On the general issue of online porn…

• I have no data to back this up, but I do have a strong feeling that the popularity surge of nudification is due to technogical advancement as much as to this porn-related effect of COVID-19

Somehow off-topic, but mandatory Public Service REMINDER: do NOT pose nude

Explanation: allow me to repeat a somehow off-topic but always essential advice: if your partner asks you to pose nude, just say NO… unless you:

1. really, really can be 100% sure that you will not care if that picture ever gets public, or
2. (maybe) if the picture is taken and printed with an analog instant camera, and YOU keep the print.

In all other cases, just say no. Just ignore any promise that it won’t be shared with anybody, ever, because it’s just meaningless: because one can really, authentically love as no one else has ever loved before, and swear to a whole pantheon of gods that the picture will stay locked in his phone or computer forever… and still have that phone or computer stolen, or cracked, ten minutes later, nude pictures and all. Just say no. Yes, it sucks, but is the only solution.