Google is lowering deepfake porn in search rankings

Google is addressing its deepfake pornography problem, now lowering AI-generated or synthetic porn in its search rankings.

A Google spokesperson confirmed to Bloomberg that the company is lowering this kind of content within search rankings on its engine, "continuing to decrease the visibility of involuntary synthetic pornography in search and develop more safeguards as this space evolves."

Traffic on sites featuring nonconsensual and AI-generated porn via Google has been down in the last month: two of the most prominent deepfake sites, for example, have respectively seen 21 percent and 25 percent less U.S.-based desktop search traffic in the first ten days of May, compared with the previous six-month average.

However, even with Google's plan to derank such search results, the sites can still be discovered.

Google says the company has "been actively developing new protections in search to help people affected by this content, building on our existing policies." Mashable has reached out to Google for comment.

Earlier this month, Google updated its policies to ban advertisers from promoting websites that facilitate the creation of deepfake pornography. The update on its longstanding ban on sexually explicit ads will be enforced on May 30 and takes aim at "sites or apps that claim to generate deepfake pornography, instructions on how to create deepfake pornography, endorsing or comparing deepfake pornography services." Advertisers who violate this policy will face suspension and the inability to advertise with Google again.

Google is also offering a request form to remove involuntary fake pornography from its search results.

Last year, Bloomberg found that Google is one of the biggest traffic-drivers to sites promoting synthetic or AI-generated porn. Searches for celebrities or content creators combined with the word "deepfake" would often result in sites specializing in such content, sending millions of views their way. A recent report from Wired also revealed that thousands of women have complained to Google about these kind of websites. And in January of this year, NBC reported that nonconsensual deepfake pornography of celebrities appeared at the top of Google's search engine and Microsoft's Bing.

The prominence and proliferation of deepfakes has been deemed a crisis, especially for women and people of marginalized genders. This year alone, deepfakes of famous figures like Taylor Swift and Jenna Ortega have sparked discourse around the subject, and the role that big tech plays. Other major platforms, including Meta apps and X (formally Twitter), have been called out for their complicity in allowing nonconsensual porn to spread.

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