【Italy】

When deepfakes burst onto the scene last year,Italy it didn’t take long for the new image-manipulation technology to go from harmless online fun to troubling tool for online harassment. However, one company is looking to shift the conversation back, strangely enough, with porn.

One of the first uses of deepfakes was the swapping the faces of porn actors and actresses with those of celebrities, a big part of what led to deepfake bans across the web. However, the adult film company Naughty America is looking to flip the telescope on that kind of scenario and make it 100 percent consensual.

Naughty America's new service lets customers insert images of themselves into scenes, transport porn stars to a whole new setting by changing the background, and, in one example, blend together the facial features of two different actors. The company uploaded a number of samples here, which are obviously not safe for work.

"We’re customizing content using deep learning," Naughty America CEO Andreas Hronopoulos told Mashable. Its clear Hronopoulos is no fan of the term deepfakes. "We’re just using deep learning to edit."

The "deep" in "deepfakes" stands for deep learning, which is how artificial intelligence learns to mimic based on the data (images, videos, etc.) presented to it. It's basically what's driving this new kind of image-manipulation technology.

To insert yourself in a Naughty America film, a user would need to pay anywhere from a few hundred bucks to thousands of dollars, depending on how technical the customizations for the user’s fantasy are. The customer would also need to provide the company with a hefty amount of visual data, including photos and videos of facial reactions and whatever else they want inserted into the video.

Hronopoulos is aware of the issues that arisen around deepfakes. To deal with previous issues concerning nonconsensual use of the technology, the company has a legal team involved making sure consent is obtained from the performers involved.

But what about consent of the user, or rather, the person in the images? Naughty America hasn't made clear how it intends to verify whether users have the right to use the images they submit. Misused, the company's new service could be a tool to create high-quality revenge porn. However, Hronopoulos said Naughty America is aware of the concerns and is taking precautions.

Naughty America says any customers who want to use the customization service would have to submit the same documents they would if they were a performer. The identification would have to match the images of the person who wants to be inserted into a film. The end product would be provided to that specific customer directly, delivered in a format preferable to them.

Pornography has often been the driving force in the adoption of new tech. And, looking past the worst uses of deepfakes so far, the technology is certainly impressive. It's possible Naughty America's move is the first step toward a rehabilitation of deepfakes as a concept.

"The future of entertainment is in personalization," Hronopoulos said. Note he said "entertainment," not "adult entertainment."