As victims from schoolgirls to AOC and Taylor Swift speak out about the horrors of AI porn, sites like LinkedIn are STILL allowing ads for 'undressing apps' that let anyone create deepfake images in seconds

The explosion of AI-generated deepfake porn is spiraling out of control, devastating hundreds of thousands of victims from ordinary schoolgirls to celebrities like Taylor Swift and politicians including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. 

The vile technology once lurked in the darkest corners of the internet but it is now so accessible that anyone can upload a photo of a friend or stranger and have a fabricated sexual image or video of them in seconds.

Apps that create these terrifyingly realistic images have become so prolific, scores of ads are even popping up unchecked on professional networking site Linkedin. 

For the women targeted - and it is women 99 percent of the time according to a recent study - the results are traumatizing. Often these fake videos and images are violent, depicting victims being raped. 

The mother of one 14-year-old victim told DailyMail.com her daughter was left feeling 'powerless and helpless'.

Others are left too scared to leave the house for fear someone has seen the footage - with one woman heartbreakingly describing how she became so desperate she almost jumped off the top of a tall building. 

The technology is so prolific that posts and adverts for 'undressing' applications pop-up on mainstream professional networking site LinkedIn 

Activist and lawyer Noelle Martin, who was just 17 when she was targeted, was one of the first to raise the alarm on deepfake pornography

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., has been the victim of countless deepfakes

The technology used to create these deepfake images varies from 'simple' undressing apps which remove clothes from a photo of a woman's body, to complex codes which can create minute-long explicit videos of rape or sexual assault.

Researcher at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, Tori Rousay, said: 'You can personalize your fantasy to an extreme level, but then once it’s posted the women see it and say "it feels like me, I feel like I have been victimized physically".'

She added: 'I’ve had people tell me: "It felt like I watched myself get raped".' 

Deepfake technology has been around since 2017, but in 2019, one of the main codes used to generate images became freely accessible and spin-offs proliferated. 

Rousay said: 'We’ve seen the numbers skyrocket. It’s become mainstream. 

'Men encourage each other to create images and then they try and create better images than each other. It’s very communal, they leave comments and come together to discuss the images and say "who’s this girl?", "how did you do that?"' 

According to a 2023 study by Home Security Heroes, 48 percent of surveyed US men have now seen deepfake pornography at least once and 74 percent of people did not feel guilty about viewing it. 

They estimated that the top ten deepfake porn videos had racked up a combined 304 million views. 

Although many of the platforms are free to download and use, creating and selling specialist deepfake porn can be profitable with subscriptions and advertising. 

Google directs traffic to the sites and in 2023, the number of links and adverts for undressing apps increased more than 2,000 percent across media platforms like Reddit and X, according to social media analyst firm Graphika.

They even appear on professional networking site LinkedIn, with a simple search revealing posts for 'Best Undress Apps and Websites in 2024', 'Best 6 Alternatives to Bikini Off Bot Online In 2024' and 'Best 10 Free DeepNude Ai Generator Apps'. 

One post urged users to 'Explore the top AI Nude Generators for creating free, realistic nude images effortlessly. Unleash your creativity today!' 

The National Center on Sexual Exploitation listed LinkedIn on their 'Dirty Dozen' list of mainstream sites that enable and profit from sexual abuse, saying the company 'facilitates image-based sexual abuse' and 'must do more' to prevent the posts.

After being contacted by DailyMail.com LinkedIn removed the posts and said they were aware of 'new and emerging deepfake content trends' on the platform. 

A spokesperson said: 'We take proactive steps to find and remove harmful content that violates our policies, including nudity and adult content. 

'We continue to enhance our proactive defenses, including stronger adult image detection defenses in private messaging that led to an increase in adult content removal. This work is ongoing and we’ll continue to invest and deploy new technologies to help keep LinkedIn safe, trusted, and professional.'

In January, sexually explicit deepfake images of Taylor Swift went viral on social media and there was instant uproar  

Behind the headlines of famous women is a sea of 'ordinary' people being targeted

In January, sexually explicit deepfake images of Taylor Swift went viral on social media. There was instantaneous uproar, and the singer was said to be considering legal action against the host site. 

A month later, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was targeted, finding a digitally altered image of someone forcing her to put her mouth on their genitals.

She told Rolling Stone: 'There are certain images that don’t leave a person, they can’t leave a person. It parallels the same exact intention of physical rape and sexual assault, [which] is about power, domination, and humiliation.' 

But behind the headlines of famous women is a sea of 'ordinary' people being targeted. 

One of the first women to raise the alarm on explicit deepfake images was activist and lawyer Noelle Martin, who was just 17 when she was targeted. 

Although she is glad that celebrity cases bring attention to the issue, she said it can be 'really dangerous', because 'there is one standard for a high profile celebrity and another standard that applies to everyone else.'

She told DailyMail.com: 'In the case of Taylor Swift she had tens of thousands of people help identify and report the material that was shared of her. 

'If you are an everyday woman you are going to have to do that on your own, searching for your own material which is traumatizing and horrific and then seeking to remove that content when you have no power, profile or privilege or legal PR teams helping you and people might not even respond to you or listen'.

She added: 'This is something that has potentially lifelong permanent consequences, it is very hard to remove and it is very hard to navigate daily life after it happens.' 

Another woman, Breeze Liu, told the New York Times that she had been so devastated after finding fake images of herself online that she had climbed to the roof of an apartment building and contemplated jumping off. 

She didn't jump and instead founded Alecto AI, a company which uses facial recognition to scan the web and identify content posted without the subject's consent.

She said: 'We are being slut-shamed and the perpetrators are completely running free'. 

It's not only adults that are affected, with schoolgirls and teenagers being targeted by both their classmates and predators. 

Dorota Mani's 14-year-old daughter, Francesca, was targeted along with her friends by boys at her New Jersey school last year when one boy fabricated and shared sexually explicit images of the girls. 

Francesca was left feeling 'helpless and powerless' but bravely spoke up, launching a campaign to push the school to enact safeguards and lobbying Congress and the Senate to enact new legal protections. 

Mani said: 'We spoke up and took control of the situation and took back our dignity, but not a lot of girls are in the same situation, a lot of them aren't able to do that with a lot of schools they will just throw them under the bus. 

'As a mother, I think you should stand up and speak up for yourself. You have done nothing wrong and you have nothing to be ashamed and you are worth it.' 

Testifying in Congress in October last year, Mani said: 'My daughter was one of several victims involved in the creation and distribution of AI Deep Fake Nudes by her classmates. 

'This event left her feeling helpless and powerless, intensified by the lack of accountability for the boys involved and the absence of protective laws, AI school policies, or even adherence to the school's own code of conduct and cyber harassment policies.'

Dorota Mani and her 14-year-old daughter, Francesca, have campaigned for more legislative protections after Francesca and her friends were targeted

Francesca was left feeling 'helpless and powerless' but bravely spoke up, launching a campaign to push the school to enact safeguards

Their campaign has taken them to the State of the Union address with Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Mike Johnson

They are supporting the Defiance Act new deepfake-AI legislation with bipartisan support to amend the Violence Against Women Act so that people can sue those who produce, distribute, or receive deepfake pornography.

If the bill passes it will be the first federal law to protect victims of deepfakes. 

As it stands, only 10 states have some form of safeguard in place: California, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Minnesota, New York, South Dakota, Texas and Virginia.

Without more legal protections, Mani knows the situation will continue to worsen, saying: 'It looks like boys will continue making deepfakes because it's more fun and entertaining than any game. 

'We can't just slap a band-aid on this and call it a day. We need comprehensive action that addresses the root of the problem, ensuring that the digital playground doesn't turn into a battleground of ethics.'