Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has seized the domains of 12 websites accused of selling AI-generated non-consensual intimate imagery of celebrities and other public figures, in what his office is calling the largest known crackdown on celebrity deepfake porn platforms to date.[1][5][6]
According to Bragg, the sites featured “hyper-realistic” explicit images and videos of roughly 1,200 people whose faces and bodies were manipulated into sexual content without their consent, with victims primarily women drawn from actors, musicians, athletes, politicians, social justice advocates and social media influencers.[1][2][4][6] Investigators say the probe began after an unnamed female celebrity reported finding herself depicted in deepfake pornography, and the seized domains had been accessible to users in Manhattan and across New York state.[2][6]
The takedown leans on New York’s 2023 statute that criminalizes the distribution of sexually explicit deepfakes without the depicted person’s permission, a law that Bragg’s office and local media note was designed to address the growing wave of AI-fueled image-based abuse.[7][9] At the federal level, the TAKE IT DOWN Act, enacted in 2025, further makes certain intentional publication and threatened publication of non-consensual intimate imagery—including AI-generated sexual deepfakes—a federal crime, giving prosecutors a new avenue to target operators and extortionists who weaponize this content.[10][13]
Even with new legal tools, authorities acknowledge that enforcement remains difficult as deepfake operators can spin up replacement domains and hosting in a matter of hours, often routing payments through cryptocurrency and operating across jurisdictions.[5][9] Bragg has warned that deepfake NCII is increasingly surfacing in domestic abuse and sextortion cases, where attackers threaten to release fabricated imagery to coerce victims, underscoring that the harms are real even when the underlying media is synthetic.[1][6][9]
The Manhattan DA’s office says it will continue to monitor the seized domains and look for mirror sites or successor infrastructure, while investigations into the individuals and services behind the 12 platforms are ongoing.[5][6] Victims are being urged to preserve evidence of deepfake abuse, report incidents to law enforcement rather than pay extortion demands, and contact the office’s Cyber Crime Bureau if they believe their likeness was used on the shuttered sites.[5]
References
- Manhattan district attorney announces AI crackdown with …
- Manhattan district attorney seizes a dozen celebrity …
- Domain names of 12 sites making ‘deepfake’ pornographic videos of celebrities seized by Manhattan DA
- Media Coverage Archives
- New York seizes 12 AI sites selling deepfake of 1,200 victims
- Manhattan DA seizes a dozen celebrity deepfake websites
- New York DA Seizes 12 Deepfake Porn Sites
- TAKE IT DOWN Act – Wikipedia
- The TAKE IT DOWN Act Targets AI-Generated and Authentic …
