New Research Shows Deepfake Harassment Tools Spread on Social Media and Search Engines

Nowadays, it is increasingly common to hear about unethical AI services, whose use often borders on and crosses into illegality, but how is it possible that such a sensitive and potentially illegal topic can spread across the Internet at such an unprecedented speed, becoming the talk of the town? In the collective imagination, generally speaking, even just knowing the specifications of illegal software would not be a source of pride, let alone something to spread around.

According to a recent analysis published by the anti-terrorism organisation Institute for Strategic Dialogue, the tools to create sexually explicit and non-consensual deepfakes are apparently “easily available” online: through a simple search on a browser such as Google or Bing, or through the normal use of any social network.

Using SimilarWeb and Brandwatch, Chiara Puglielli and Anne Craanen, the two researchers responsible for the analysis in question, found a total of 410,592 mentions of the keywords between 9 June 2020 and 3 July 2025 - using words such as “deepnude,” ‘nudify,’ and ‘undress app’, they found that one of the aforementioned services could be found in the top 20 search results via a browser.