Atrioc, whose real name is Brandon Ewing, is back on Twitch. He’d been on hiatus from the streaming platform for about a month and a half after accidentally sharing his Chrome browser tabs on a live stream and revealing he’d visited a site that sells explicit, non-consensual deepfakes — particularly those that that other streamers were on’ likenesses were edited onto the bodies of porn stars.
Screenshots of the website were widely shared by those who watched Ewing’s live stream. And the streamers whose likenesses appeared on the deepfake site, including QTCinderella, Maya Higa, Sweet Anita and Pokimane – some of whom are friends with Ewing – had to deal with the aftermath. In the following weeks, the affected women exposed to harassmentcirculated on the Internet as explicit images of their likenesses.
Last Tuesday, Ewing went on stream to provide an update on the “actions” he was taking in the wake of his deepfake scandal. The stream experienced significant technical glitches that caused it to dip on and off while Ewing spoke. He said he works with “reporters, technologists, researchers, affected women, Twitch itself — I try to work with everyone I can.”
Ewing also apologized for his first tearful apology Video he posted on January 30th which has since been removed from his account. In that first apology video, he claimed he navigated to the site because he clicked on a PornHub ad out of “morbid curiosity.” On January 31st Ewing also shared a statement on Twitter via TwitLonger
During the stream, Ewing said he wire $60,000 to Morrison Rothman, the law firm that recommended QTCinderella to women affected by the deepfake scandal. For comment, a founding partner at the law firm, Ryan Morrison, emailed Polygon the following:
I can’t confirm who used it or how much (attorney/client privilege), but I can certainly confirm that Atrioc sent a 60,000 advance to be used exclusively for women affected by deepfakes and similar issues , and that goes *long* way with our tariffs for such services. Advances are retained and only deducted when used or an invoice is created and whatever is left over at the end of the matter is returned to the customer. As this is an ongoing matter, it will most likely continue to be used and assist in the protections we can provide to those affected.
In the course of his research into deepfakes, Ewing said he learned that the creators of OnlyFans had made strides in fighting deepfake porn. He found that a company called Ceartas — which uses artificial intelligence to tag creators’ looks and file DMCA reports — was one of OnlyFans’ security partners, according to the site Transparency Report 2023.
A Ceartas representative told Polygon via email that the company was formed “specifically to combat deepfake pornography, revenge pornography and image-based sexual abuse.” Confirming that Ewing had worked with them, they said: “Brandon reached out to us for support a few weeks ago after being unhappy with the work of a law firm. We provided a trial on behalf of the creators he mentioned in his stream. This has now moved from testing to service.”
The representative also responded to some of Ewing’s claims regarding the company’s AI model:
As for the stream saying we don’t have enough developers for our AI model, Brandon may have been referring specifically to the Twitch streamers. We have close to 500 clients across multiple industries (OnlyFans, Instagram, Patreon, YouTube, etc.) but not that many Twitch-like creators facing deepfake issues (considering many of them don’t create NSFW content ). However, we have tons of data for our AI tools to work with – of course, more edge case data is welcome.
Ewing also said he received help from an unlikely person: Maya Higa, one of the women affected by the deepfake scandal, reportedly responded to his apology and request to work with her. Ewing said she used justice, and in 12 hours they were reportedly able to remove 512 articles from Google (Ewing did not specify what exactly was removed). He compared that number to the 51 takedowns that Morrison Rothman reportedly issued in February.
Ewing said that following these successful results, QTCinderella also used Ceartas to remove a number of deepfakes. He also said that Amouranth reached out to him and asked him to help her “break things down”.
Polygon has reached out to representatives from QTCinderella, Pokimane, Amouranth, and Maya Higa for comment and will update the story once we receive a response.
It is incredibly difficult to prevent the creation of deepfake images and remove them from the internet. As the technology that can create them becomes more sophisticated – especially with generative AI making it easier than ever – there is potential for abuse and harassment also keeps growing
Since Atrioc’s livestream in January, the barrage of harassment has been endless for the women targeted by these deepfakes. In January, QTCinderella went live to respond to the incident. “Fuck the damn internet. Fuck the constant exploitation and objectification of women — it’s exhausting,” she said. “It looks like this. That’s what the pain looks like.” In the months that followed, she continued to organize the Streamer Awards, telling Polygon in a recent interview, “I think every woman in the industry can attest that it’s just a fight to the top.”
Ewing’s apology video only seemed to exacerbate the situation; in January, Sweet Anita tweeted that his apology video was how she discovered there were explicit deepfakes of her on a website. In February, Kotaku reported extensively about how the fallout had affected her. “They want to see you as a whore no matter what you do. And they want to hate you for being a whore. It doesn’t matter if you participate, they will make you participate,” Sweet Anita told Kotaku.
In the months following the incident, a number of ads were launched for apps that allow users to deepfake — including this one with a person edited Bearing resemblance to Emma Watson – also started to spread on Facebook.
Twitch took more than a month to respond to these events. On March 7th Twitch has finally updated some of its policies regarding non-consensual exploitative images (NCEI). The company has updated the language in its Adult Sexual Violence and Exploitation policy to “clarify more clearly that intentionally promoting, creating or distributing synthetic NCEI may result in an indefinite suspension.” The adult nudity policy has also been updated to include NCEI. The company has consulted with the UK Revenge Porn Helpline and Danielle Keats Citron, Vice President of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative.