Brandon “Atrioc” Ewing – the Twitch streamer who inadvertently revealed in January that he was watching explicit deepfake content featuring female streamers he’s friends with in IRL, sparked a massive controversy– has recently returned to the platform to update his fans.
Continue reading: The aftermath of Twitch’s deepfake porn scandal
During his March 14 stream, which was mired in technical difficulties due to internet glitches, Ewing claimed that he’s been working on deepfake porn content “pretty much every day” since his rather “really horrible” apology video in which his wife appeared Combat cried in the background and its chat overlay steadily scrolled through on-screen viewer comments.
Atrioc vows to fight deepfakes
Ewing claimed he’s worked with “reporters, technologists, researchers, affected women” in the month and a half since his last stream. “A week into the event, the first thing I did was wire Morrison Rothman [an LA-based law firm] approximately $60,000 for every woman on Twitch who wanted to use their legal services for DMCA takedowns or reputation management,” he claimed, saying that one of the streamers featured in the deepfake content he was watching was featured , QTCinderella, the company recommended to all female streamers affected by Ewing’s deepfake incident.
Morrison Rothman Founding partner Ryan Morrison, known on social media as the “video game advocate,” confirmed this my city via Twitter DM. “Atrioc sent a $60,000 advance to be used solely for women affected by deepfakes and similar issues,” he wrote, “[and that amount] goes a long with our tariffs for such services.”
Continue reading: Twitch finally addresses the porn deepfake scandal over a month later
During yesterday’s new stream, which has been paused and restarted periodically due to technical issues, Ewing also claimed he was contacted by Genevieve Oh, whom he described as “a leading researcher in the fight against deepfakes.” Ewing said Oh sent him a 25-page document she put together about the technology behind deepfakes and how the rapid leaps the technology has made in recent years contribute to its adoption today.
my city also received such a document from Oh when the controversy began and can confirm that it contains the information Ewing discusses in his stream. It explains how just a few years ago the technology required to create deepfake content required much more computing power than it does today. Now there are even phone apps that can create passable deepfakes, which is why the content is proliferating on social media and the internet in general.
Ewing thanked Oh for bringing it up to speed faster than he could have done on his own, but said his initial reaction to the proliferation of this content and the associated difficulty in removing it was depression. However, he said he then shifted his focus and narrowed his scope so he could focus on things he could control. “Using Genevieve’s document and my own research, I’ve tried to find the ‘bright spots’ in the fight against this type of content,” he said. And according to him, there is a group of people who are “much better” at fighting and removing deepfake content.
Remove unwanted content with “AI”
This group are OnlyFans creators. “They were way ahead of the curve in terms of best practices for tackling this type of thing, and that’s because they have a direct financial incentive,” Ewing said. So he started investigating what OnlyFans creators use to remove illegally reproduced content. He eventually came into contact with an employee of justicean “AI-powered” DMCA takedown company based in Ireland that offers content creators a choice of service plans ranging from $99 to $549 per month.
Ceartas’ website claims that it has a 98 percent success rate when it comes to helping content creators “recover lost revenue by automatically stopping illegally hosted platforms and bad actors stealing and leaking your copyrighted content.” found, deindexed and eliminated”. Ceartas, Ewing said, is “basically a technology that uses bots and AI to fight bots and AI,” which “automatically flags abusive use of your likeness and dangerous keywords, and fills out and submits DMCA notices” for its subscribers. OnlyFans has named Ceartas an Official OnlyFans Security Partner as mentioned in the February 2023 OnlyFans Transparency Report.
Ewing said that he wanted other content creators who need DMCA takedown support to work with him and Ceartas to see how effective the service would be, but that he was initially unable to get other streamers to work with him – understandably.
But, Ewing claims, Maya Higa, one of the Twitch creators portrayed in the deepfake content he saw on his infamous January stream, reportedly responded to his apology and request for collaboration. Ewing said he and Higa then tested Ceartas and found it to be far more effective than the traditional, manual method of paying an attorney to file DMCA takedown requests.
Higa, who Ewing says used the money he wired to Morrison Rothman to initiate takedowns, recorded just 51 successful content takedowns in February. The Ceartas test, which Ewing said “takes a while to set up,” apparently resulted in 512 confirmed takedowns and over a thousand DMCA requests related to Higa’s content and its likeness.
Continue reading: Twitch streamer Pokimane wants tougher revenge porn laws
Ewing showed the results to QTCinderella, who agreed to test Ceartas for herself and he claimed her tests went even better. From there, Ewing said popular streamers Pokimane and Amouranth agreed to get involved.
my city has reached out to the staff at Maya Higa, QTCinderella, Pokimane and amorous to confirm the details shared by Ewing.
Twitch streamer Sweet Anita, who was also affected by the deepfake content, confirmed this my city via Discord DMs that she was not contacted by Ewing or anyone from Ceartas, but has expressed interest in the service afterward my city sent her a link to the site.
my city reached out to Ceartas and Ewing, but received no response at the time of publication.
