Characterizing the MrDeepFakes Sexual Deepfake Marketplace
Catherine Han, Anne Li, Deepak Kumar, Zakir Durumeric
TL;DR
This study systematically characterizes the MrDeepFakes platform, the largest public marketplace for sexual deepfakes, to understand the ecosystem's growth, targets, pricing, and creation practices. By combining large-scale quantitative measurements of videos and posts with qualitative analysis of forum threads, the authors reveal lax enforcement of celebrity-target rules, a diversity of buyer motivations beyond mere sexual gratification, and a sophisticated, community-supported deepfake creation pipeline relying on open-source tools and cloud GPUs. The findings highlight a two-tier market (high-end, artisanal deepfakes versus cheaper commodity options), extensive data-sharing practices (facesets), and a vibrant open-source-enabled culture that challenges straightforward mitigation. The work underscores the need for target hardening, policy measures, and collaboration with open-source communities to curb nonconsensual deepfake harms while acknowledging the dual-use nature of AI research and the potential for harm-reduction through thoughtful regulation and education.
Abstract
The prevalence of sexual deepfake material has exploded over the past several years. Attackers create and utilize deepfakes for many reasons: to seek sexual gratification, to harass and humiliate targets, or to exert power over an intimate partner. In part enabling this growth, several markets have emerged to support the buying and selling of sexual deepfake material. In this paper, we systematically characterize the most prominent and mainstream marketplace, MrDeepFakes. We analyze the marketplace economics, the targets of created media, and user discussions of how to create deepfakes, which we use to understand the current state-of-the-art in deepfake creation. Our work uncovers little enforcement of posted rules (e.g., limiting targeting to well-established celebrities), previously undocumented attacker motivations, and unexplored attacker tactics for acquiring resources to create sexual deepfakes.