Our firm is at the forefront of fighting tech-facilitated violence, including online blackmail, extortion, and sextortion. We’ve recently seen a concerning new fact pattern in which scammers are using artificial intelligence (AI) to lure victims into sending real explicit content and money.
With this scam, an anonymous offender chooses a victim on a mainstream social media platform and initiates a friendly (or flirty) conversation. Then the offender urges the victim to continue the conversation on a different platform. This second platform is usually one that’s got greater anonymity like Telegram. The offender then presents the victim with an AI-generated nude of the victim (AKA a “deepfake”) along with a dossier of all of the victim’s friends, relatives, workplace, and contact info they’ve gathered online. (LinkedIn is an especially fertile place to gather this kind of information). The offender threatens to share the deepfake with all of the victim’s contacts unless the victim sends a real nude photo. When the victim complies, the offender uses the victim’s real photo to create an AI-generated masturbation video. Then, the offender starts demanding money, threatening to share the digitally forged video with the victim’s contacts.
This is a departure from the fact pattern we’ve historically seen, in which offenders initiate a sexual conversation with a victim (often male) online, entice the victim to send nudes or get on video chat naked on their own accord, and then screenshot/record without the victim’s consent and demand money.
By weaponizing AI in this way, blackmailers are making it so that anyone can become a victim of sextortion, whether or not you ever sent a nude photo or got naked on camera.
If this has happened to you, you are not alone. Please, whatever you do, do not do anything drastic or self-harming to escape the situation. Tell somebody you trust so you are not dealing with this alone.
If you or someone you know is dealing with blackmail, extortion, or sextortion, whether or not AI is used, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
