Deepfakes brought turmoil into the streaming community when Atrioc was recently caught looking at deepfaked nude photographs of female streamers in a live broadcast.
Popular streamer xQc has since voiced his opinion on the matter, slamming Twitch fans for condoning deepfake use.
“People come at my house, man. This aren’t things that I want. I get it, some things come with the terrain, but if you say, dude, you get paid this amount… bro, it’s still trash,” he said on a live broadcast on Monday.
“This content they’re putting out of these girls genuinely fosters that exact behavior. But more importantly, they didn’t ask for it. That’s the problem,” xQc added.
Creating deepfake content using AI allows users to edit the face of someone famous onto live content, and it can be disturbingly convincing. For example, a streamer edited Keanu Reeves face on them while streaming earlier this month.
The issue is that people don’t consent to the use of their images in these deepfakes. It’s highly problematic—and illegal in many territories of the world.
Female streamers have been excessively targeted by deepfakes since the technology became easier to use.
Many streamers have voiced their concerns about this over the last few years, but unfortunately, finding the perpetrators is challenging. This forces victims to manually report content for it to be taken down.
After Atrioc’s controversy, streamer QTCinderella vowed to sue the deepfake website he was reportedly using.