These Men Allegedly Profit Off Teaching People How to Make AI Porn
Key takeaways
- Last summer, she received a DM from one of her followers.
- MG was horrified. “If you didn’t know me well, you could very well think they were images of me,” she said. “It was kind of like this reality check that I don’t have any control over my own image.”
- MG is one of three plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed in January in Arizona against three Phoenix men: Jackson Webb, Lucas Webb, and Beau Schultz, as well as 50 other John Does.
Why this matters: a development in AI with implications for how people work, create, and decide.
Photo-illustration: WIRED Staff; Getty Images Comment Loader Save Story Save this story Comment Loader Save Story Save this story. A little over a year ago, MG was leading the relatively normal life of a twentysomething in Scottsdale, Arizona. She worked as a personal assistant and supplemented her income by waiting tables on the weekends. Like most women her age, she had an Instagram account, where she’d occasionally post Stories and photos of herself getting matcha and hanging out by the pool with her friends, or going to Pilates.
“I never really cared to pop off and become popular on social media,” says MG (who is cited only as MG in the lawsuit to protect her identity). “I just used it the way most people did when it first came out, to share their lives with the people closest to them.” She has a little more than 9,000 followers—a robust following, but nowhere close to a massive platform.
Last summer, she received a DM from one of her followers. Did she know, the person asked her, that photos and videos of a woman who looked exactly like MG were circulating on Instagram? MG clicked the link and saw multiple Reels of what appeared to be her face superimposed onto a body that looked exactly like her own. The woman in the photo was scantily clad, with tattoos in the same places as MG.