Paris Hilton sounds the alarm on AI-generated exploitation in new TikTok series: ‘It could happen to literally anyone’

Paris Hilton is sounding the alarm about explicit AI-generated images that she says could “ruin someone’s life,” shining a star-powered light on one of the darkest corners of the internet.

“Searching for Mr. Deepfakes,” Hilton’s new true crime docuseries, just debuted exclusively on her TikTok channel. The series, shared in rapid-fire videos built for a younger-skewing social media audience who “wouldn’t have watched a long-form documentary,” details a years-long investigation launched by tech journalist Laurie Segall to track down the anonymous owner of an AI-generated pornography site called Mr. Deepfakes. 

Hilton told ITK in an exclusive interview that, using AI technology, “people can just take a photo — a family photo, a Christmas photo, anything — and literally turn it into an explicit image or video.”

“It could happen to literally anyone who puts their image online,” she warned.

Segall said after getting a tip about the site and taking a look, “There were thousands of videos of women — AI-generated but who didn’t consent — doing sexual, graphic things they had never done.”

Hilton’s image was among the multitude of women featured on the site — but they weren’t all famous faces.

“They said it was ‘public women,’ but ‘public’ was a very loose definition. I just remember looking at this and saying, ‘How on earth does this exist?’” exclaimed Segall.

“There was nothing these women could do, because they would try to contact the owner of the site, and it was anonymous,” added Segall, the CEO of Mostly Human Media.

“Some of these look very realistic,” Hilton said, “so it’s just completely frightening.”

It’s an issue, Hilton said, that’s “deeply personal” for her. 

The TV personality has been open about what happened to her in 2003, when an intimate video of her was shared on the internet without her consent. It was an experience that she said has significantly impacted her work today.

“It took me 20 years to be able to speak about it out loud, because when you go through something, it’s so traumatizing that you just don’t even want to think it’s real. You just don’t even want to remember it, speak about it, and there’s also a huge shame behind it,” she........

© The Hill