The Download: deepfake porn's stolen bodies and AI sharing private numbers
Deepfake technology is being used to create non-consensual explicit content featuring the bodies of past adult performers without their permission, raising serious legal and ethical concerns. AI chatbots are inadvertently exposing private phone numbers by retrieving personal information from training data, leaving individuals vulnerable to harassment. Meanwhile, the US has approved Nvidia chip sales to major Chinese firms, and the Tesla Semi is entering production, potentially advancing electric trucking.
- ▪AI systems are cloning the likenesses of adult performers and generating explicit content without their consent.
- ▪Generative AI chatbots have exposed private phone numbers due to personally identifiable information in training data.
- ▪The US has approved Nvidia H200 chip sales to 10 Chinese firms, including Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance.
- ▪Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is in China with a White House delegation amid ongoing tech trade discussions.
- ▪The Tesla Semi, with a 480-mile range, is entering production nearly a decade after its initial announcement.
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The DownloadThe Download: deepfake porn’s stolen bodies and AI sharing private numbersPlus: the US has approved Nvidia chip sales to 10 Chinese firms. By Thomas Macaulayarchive pageMay 14, 2026 This is today's edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. The shock of seeing your body used in deepfake porn When Jennifer got a research job in 2023, she ran her new professional headshot through a facial recognition program. She wanted to see whether it would pull up the porn videos she’d made more than a decade earlier. It did, but it also surfaced something she’d never seen before: one of her old videos, now featuring someone else’s face on her body.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at MIT Technology Review.
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