How to use AI to fight online image abuse

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RANA EL KALIOUBY: Before we get started, we do talk about some very difficult topics on this episode, including sexual abuse and suicide. If you or someone you know needs help call the suicide and crisis lifeline at 988. Okay, onto the episode.

EL KALIOUBY: Something pretty monumental happened recently at the White House. And with all the nonstop news on tariffs, immigration issues, protests – you may have missed it. President Trump signed the Take It Down Act into law. This legislation criminalizes the publishing of non consensual intimate images online – commonly referred to as “revenge porn.” This material can be real or artificially created. According to the new law, once reported, companies hosting these images and videos have 48 hours to take them down.

BREEZE LIU 2: I knew like, I probably have to change the law if I want to be successful in executing my vision, but I just never anticipated I could actually change the law because back then everyone was telling me, there is no way you can change the law.

EL KALIOUBY: That’s Breeze Liu. She’s been instrumental in advocating for this legislation.

A few years back, Breeze discovered that an explicit video of her had been posted on the internet without her consent. There was the original real video that was posted. And then she found there were more than 800 videos of her … synthetically created using AI – also known as deepfakes.

Needless to say, it’s been traumatic. And she knew that this story did not stop with her.

2: 98% of all deep fakes are pornographic and 99% target women. This technology just exists to humiliate women. Right? The data is very, very clear.

EL KALIOUBY: Breeze has since dedicated her time and effort to making sure no one else goes through the same experience. She’s founder and CEO of Alecto AI – a company using AI technology to fight online image abuse.

Breeze shares her personal story, from survivor to advocate to entrepreneur. We hear how she’s deploying some of the same technology that led to the spread of online image abuse – to help fight it. And learn how the Take it Down Act could stop deepfake abuse.

I’m Rana el Kaliouby and this is Pioneers of AI – a podcast taking you behind the scenes of the AI revolution.

[THEME MUSIC]

Welcome to Pioneers of AI. Thank you for joining us on the show. We are going to be tackling a very important and highly sensitive topic today. So first of all, I’m really grateful for you for making time for us. I know all our listeners will learn a lot from you today, and I also hope that you will help us really find the right way to navigate all of this and use the right terminology to talk about this problem. So I’m just really grateful and excited to have you on the show.

BREEZE LIU 1: Thank you so much for having me. Thank you.

Copy LinkUnderstanding online image abuse beyond the term revenge porn

1: Okay, so there’s so much to talk about. We are going to get into your story, your personal story, and also your company Alecto AI. But before we do that, what exactly is revenge porn and can you kind of unpack that for us?

2: Yeah, absolutely. So it’s actually a very complicated issue. I don’t like to call it revenge porn because porn is consensual and there’s nothing consensual about the abuse.

So I think in the non-profit world, they call it non-consensual sharing of intimate images. NCII, and if it involves a minor or children, it’s CSAM, child sexual abuse material. So these things are, first of all, abusive content. They are not porn because it was never legally produced.

EL KALIOUBY: Yeah. Thank you for clarifying that.

2: Yeah, no problem. I just feel like if we want to change the culture, we need to start changing the mindset, right? But yeah, just to clarify that it’s abusive content, but it comes in many different forms. Sometimes it’s like when it was created, maybe it was consensually shared between a couple. But when something didn’t work out and something goes wrong.

So they would share that video and say like, I’m going to ruin your life, I’m going to put it on PornHub. And it became what it is. And also some other times it was taken without anyone’s consent. Like there’s a webcam in a bedroom and the woman usually doesn’t even know about it until they see that they’re on PornHub. And there were also sometimes hidden cameras in public places, like in public bathrooms and hotel rooms and Airbnbs, and people checking into the hotel or going to the bathroom.

They just had no idea what was going on. And in Korea, a few years back, they had this movement called My Life is Not Your Porn. It’s a huge issue.

So whether it’s synthetic content or deep fake abuse, AI generated, or authentic image abuse, we are all living in fear, especially women. But I also wanted to point out that not only women are the victims of this. We need to show more compassion to men as well.

So teenage boys are actually largely impacted by sextortion. Through my advocacy journey, I got to talk to another survivor.

He has a very tragic story. He’s a teenage son who actually took his own life after being sextorted. It’s like a criminal organization, like people pretend to be attractive teenage girls and then kind of trick the young boys to send nude photos of themselves and then threaten them saying, if you don’t give us this much Bitcoin, we’re going to tell your parents and ruin your life.

EL KALIOUBY: Breeze knows so much about the many forms of online image abuse because she experienced it herself. She’s fought for years to get these images of her taken down. And this experience is the backbone of her advocacy.

Copy LinkHow a personal violation became a fight for survival and justice

1: So I guess I’d love to hear your personal story, whatever you feel comfortable sharing, of that story. I guess this began for you in 2020. Yeah. So a little bit about my background. I majored in peace and conflict studies at UC Berkeley, and that’s a major I often joke about. You are either going to change the world or starve to death because you’re not going to get a job with that major in Silicon Valley. Right. Because it’s not computer science, it’s not tech related. So what happened after you studied that? Yeah, so I thought I was going to become a diplomat, but living in Silicon Valley, San Francisco Bay area, it’s just not very practical for a fresh out of college young person to become a diplomat. So my first job out of college was actually on the trust and safety team at a big tech company. I really learned a lot from doing this kind of work. I understand what is broken and how things are working, and that big tech companies when it comes to self-regulating. Let’s take it back to April 2020. It was during the pandemic, but it was a beautiful, sunny afternoon.

I was at my apartment and I received a Facebook message from my college friend and he said, I don’t want you to panic, but there is a video of you circulating on PornHub. And he sent me the link and on a thumbnail that was my face. And that was the moment that completely changed my life. I’ve never used PornHub, but I’ve heard about what it is, right? And when I clicked into it, I also saw how many people have viewed this video of me. It really just completely broke me. I’m not a celebrity, I am not a politician. I just wasn’t prepared to be so exposed in front of the entire world for this kind of exploitation and abuse. And I couldn’t take it anymore. So I went to the rooftop of my building and I was attempting to commit suicide at that moment.

God. Oh my God. Okay. I am glad you got through that moment and I’m so sorry you had to go through this. I’m so sorry you had to go through this. I have a whole bunch of questions for you. First, what was the moment when you went from feeling hopeless to being empowered to do something about it? Yeah, it definitely took a while. It doesn’t happen overnight. Any ordinary human being when they face this sort of issue, even adults or otherwise, you just feel very alone, like the ground disappears beneath you and nobody could understand what is going on. And that’s exactly how I felt. I was overwhelmed with shame and I couldn’t even tell my parents about it. And I told her about this situation. She said, if you really go to the police, you need to be prepared that law enforcement sometimes might not understand this issue fully and you might not get a very great response. So I reported this to the police and the police did create a case for me, which I am grateful for, but at the end it just went nowhere. Instead of, I mean, I have very clear evidence of who the perpetrator is, but back then there wasn’t any federal law that criminalizes this kind of behavior. At one point the police asked me, have you ever engaged in prostitution? Do you ever exchange money for sexual videos or photos of yourself? It’s just really humiliating. It really kind of broke me again.

How did you realize the extent to which these images were out there, like how did you find out how many of these videos or images were out there and how did you track them down? Oh God, yeah. These things never just stay in one place. They would proliferate all over the internet. It’s like a disease. So that original video actually got copied and shared again and again on PornHub.

And it was also uploaded to other websites, leaching websites which crawl and download content from PornHub. So that was like only the original video.

Yeah. So what started out as just one video ended up on over at least 800 abusive URLs all over the world. Yeah.

EL KALIOUBY: Many of these nonconsensual intimate videos were synthetically created using AI – starting with that original video that Breeze’s perpetrator posted.

Non-consensual intimate images – whether real or deepfakes are extraordinarily common. According to a study from Thorn, a child safety nonprofit, 6% of American teens have been the target of these kinds of deepfakes. But even though they’re so common, before the Take it Down Act, they’ve been extremely difficult to remove. In a minute, Breeze explains why.

Copy LinkWhy harmful images spread so fast and are so hard to remove

2: How did you go about taking these images down? Like what’s the process? Well, that is a very long story. So originally when I found out about that one video and then people kept telling me that there’s more of that out there.

And at one point, it was just too much for me as a human being. And I decided I’m not even going to think about what might be out there because it’s just too much for me to handle. So in 2020, I hit pause on myself. I was like, I’m going to lock all of these crazy abusive memories in a box in my head that says, do not open until you’re much stronger. But in 2023, I was introduced to Nicholas Kristof.

EL KALIOUBY: Nicholas Kristof is an opinion columnist for the New York Times. He often writes about human and women’s rights.

2: And then we decided to work on this story together. So before Nick Kristof wrote about me, I remained anonymous. But at one point I realized I need to channel my activism and my advocate voice. I decided to speak up. So the New York Times article with Nicholas Kristof was the very first time I used my name and my face. So brave. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, I had to really prepare myself for that.

For over a year I was like, okay, I’m ready. But before this New York Times article came out, I was like, okay, I need to know what’s out there about me, right? So I decided to reach out to an organization to help me with first discovering this content. Actually, that’s an organization called In It Down. Tracking it down. That’s an organization in the UK.

So I still remember the moment when that organization in the UK sent me the emails. They gave me an Excel sheet. Yeah, an Excel sheet with all the URL names. So it’s not all of this content, but they were like, for privacy reasons, you have to download it to your own computer. You have to just do that. And it was very difficult. I remember I had to call my therapist and have my friend hold my hand to click the download button. And I still, until this day, I cannot look at even the name of the URLs. But this friend of mine, she got curious and she clicked into the Excel sheet and started just scrolling through and looking at the name of the URLs. And she started crying and she was like, I can’t imagine why would any human being do this to another person? So until this day I don’t know exactly what is in the URL names, but I know it’s very bad and it’s probably not good for my mental health to even think about it.

But then does this UK organization go to these websites and ask them to take down these images? Is that the process? So because I’m not a UK citizen, they couldn’t help me and I had to use my network and eventually I found a French organization, it’s called Point de Contact. And they are so kind and they said, we’re going to help you because you are really taking a huge one for the world for coming out about this. They were able to remove a lot of this abusive content through the standard process.

But 142 URLs were hosted on Microsoft Azure’s server and their point of contact, Point de Contact, is a trusted flagger by Microsoft. And even though they used all of their connections to try to reach out to Microsoft and I provided all of the information I could, my passport and my statement and everything, Microsoft just refused to take it down for a very long time.

Eventually we had to corner the head of trust and safety of Microsoft at a conference to beg them to take down my content.

Copy LinkWhere survivors can turn when the internet never fully forgets

Do you know if there are still any images of you out there or are they all down? Well, I bet there are still some out there because PornHub allowed downloads and I’m sure it’s still somewhere. So that’s the part that I always have to live with, knowing that it’s always out there. What is your advice for people who have been exposed to this and are trying, who have self-harming thoughts? Where did you get support? What’s your advice for people who are potentially going through this and how can they get support? Yeah, I definitely understand how crazy that feels, like I’m all alone and there’s no one who can help me. But one thing I wanted to say is that there are people doing good work like me, right? And there are a lot of nonprofits, like the ones that helped me, they’re amazing, but it really took a very long time. And my solution at Alecto AI is about trying to minimize human suffering.

EL KALIOUBY: Alecto AI – Breeze is founder and CEO of this company. They use AI to combat the kind of online image abuse that is often created by people using AI.

Copy LinkUsing AI and facial recognition to find and remove abusive content

2: So tell us about Alecto. What do you do? What’s the process look like if somebody suspects that their content is out there? Yeah. So when I first started Alecto AI, I was still working full-time as a VC because I need to live, I need a salary. But luckily we had a really good year in crypto and I accumulated some crypto, so I was able to quit my job to focus on Alecto AI full time.

But I remember when I first had this idea, I just started writing on my bedroom window and then I was looking at it, wow, that is the vision. So it’s a little bit different from starting companies in garages, which is what most tech founders would do. I wrote it on my bedroom window.

Yeah. So I had a very big vision since the very beginning because I know this is, first of all, a systemic problem and it requires a systemic solution. And also this is a tech enabled problem, so we need to have a tech enabled solution. I mean, I had a lot of rejection and people laughing to my face. At one point I realized unless I changed the world, unless I changed the entire system, justice wouldn’t even be an option for me. Yeah. I think it’s actually very cool that a lot of this problem is people exploiting AI, but you’re actually using AI to solve the problem. So walk us through that. My understanding is Alecto uses facial recognition technology. What does that look like? Yeah. So my idea was actually inspired by the game theory series, the nuclear deterrence theory, which was one of my favorites. I think it is very smart. You have to deter nuclear weapons with nuclear weapons, and then you have balance, and that way it’s more likely to have peace. So if you have two countries or powers that don’t like each other, it’s more safe for the world when both of them have nuclear weapons. Which is why I think using AI to deter AI generated abuse is a necessary step. And this is really the trend as we move forward. Can you walk us through how Alecto works? Say an individual decides to engage with Alecto and download the app, what does the process look like? Yeah. So we try to make it very simple and as easy as possible for people to use it. You download the app and then you go through a liveness check, making sure that you are a real person living and breathing.

And if I try to upload your face to Alecto’s system it doesn’t work. So after you go through the liveness check, our system then would use facial recognition to look through if your image has been abused across different platforms and different websites, and then it will show you here are these things.

And then you can just click a few buttons and tell us which one you want us to help you remove. And then that’s it. You don’t have to worry about it. You don’t have to deal with that pain. It’s a very simple and easy product. People want to take it down and we help them take it down.

But one thing we do have is the community and also the global network of all the different organizations, mental health support, legal support, everything is in our app. So if they download it they can click into it and get the help they need. That is instant support.

Copy LinkBuilding safer facial recognition that works across different communities

Basically the core technology here is facial recognition technology, and you’ve been pretty adamant on Alecto’s website that the technology is anti-racist. We’ve talked about facial recognition a lot on the show and how we absolutely need to mitigate data and algorithmic bias. So how do you ensure that the facial recognition technology underlying Alecto is not biased in any way? Yeah. So even for the industry standard facial recognition, it’s already performing very well. But we are constantly training our data to make sure, I’m Asian and I bet there’s a lot of discrimination associated with my skin tone, and not to mention being an Asian woman. So we are trying to adjust to make it available to everyone, especially considering the fact that this is disproportionately impacting women and people of color.

So we’re definitely aware of that and we understand that technology is not perfect, but because this is a personal issue for me, I always make sure that it performs well across different skin tones.

EL KALIOUBY: But from the moment Breeze started planning out Alecto AI, she knew the problem could not be solved by her company alone. There needed to be systematic, legislative changes. Which is why she started testifying before members of Congress. After a short break, we dig into the Take it Down Act and how it could stop deepfake abuse.

[AD BREAK]

Copy LinkHow the Take It Down Act creates accountability for platforms and perpetrators

2: Alright, so let’s talk about Take it Down. Walk us through what the legislation actually entails, and when is it gonna come online? What does it mean for companies out there? Yeah, talk us through it. So this is actually a landmark success because this is the first federal legislation that criminalizes deep fake abuse and other forms of NCII. Before that, it was completely blank. We didn’t have any federal law. It was only state law. So even if you somehow got to the FBI, unless you’re a minor, the FBI couldn’t take your case because they have to follow jurisdiction, right?

This is not just their jurisdiction. I remember when I finally begged the FBI to take my case, which went all the way to the White House back then, and they were like, we looked into it, but this isn’t under our jurisdiction.

So they were trying to kick me back to the police, the local police, and the police were like, anything cyber related has to go to the FBI. So I was being ping-ponged around for a very long time. It was just really frustrating. So at one point I just decided I’m not even going to think about it until the law became law.

So it’s very practical. We understand nothing happens overnight, but at least right now you have a deterrent. People know that if you do something like that.

You will be held accountable. Yeah. This also requires online platforms to remove the non-consensual explicit images within 48 hours. I mean, I don’t even know what to say because this is just what I’ve been dreaming about since day one. Yeah. This is great. Time is everything. Even 48 hours, I think, is sometimes too long for people who are very vulnerable.

Because think about it, realizing there could potentially be millions of people who have viewed abusive content of me out there, it’s just an unbearable thought. For teenagers, they’re already dealing with a lot, and their frontal cortex isn’t fully developed. So think about that. They make emotional decisions and that could impact the rest of their lives.

Copy LinkBalancing consent free speech concerns and the need for stronger protections

So this got sweeping support across party lines and I know that you clearly mentioned that technology was only a part of the solution. We needed the law as well. But there’s also been some concern around this law and actually some pushback that this might limit free speech. So people are concerned that it may be too ambiguous, and some people, including the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, have expressed concern about this. What’s your response to all of that? Yeah. So speaking from my perspective, I used to work at one of these big tech companies, and I remember back in those days, one of the most complicated issues I had to deal with was how do you determine what’s free speech and what’s hate speech? Are we going to take this down or keep it up?

What are we gonna do? This is something that AI cannot determine, but I think one thing is very clear: consent, right? If you upload something without my consent and it’s very abusive, this is not free speech. It’s intended to hurt me.

So in practice, over the years we might find out that the law we created wasn’t perfect, but we can go and amend it. But right now there’s no deterrence. Before this, there wasn’t any federal law to criminalize this, and that’s why you have such a huge problem.

And I also wanted to talk about the backlash I faced as an entrepreneur trying to fundraise. You would assume if I were a man, let’s just face it, if I were a white man with blonde hair and blue eyes, it would be so easy for me.

And even though I am pretty sure my company is the very first survivor-founded technical solution in the world, because my company was registered back in 2021, it’s interesting to me that after we had this success that I advocated so hard for years, and finally we have a law, a lot of male-founded startups are now saying they want to protect women’s online safety. And also when I was pitching this idea to people, which should be a no-brainer, right?

There were VCs laughing to my face, laughing out loud. I told them I had been victimized myself and I was a VC, but it didn’t matter to them.

This is why we need diversity. We need women as check writers. Yeah. We need women to be empowered and to empower other women. And now we are funded, but it really took a very long time. It was just very emotionally damaging as well to hear people react like that. It is shocking that people are dying, women and children are dying, and they could just not care. Now, I guess this is a hopeful moment for you with Take it Down and also Alecto being funded. What is next for Alecto? So we definitely want to scale. We have Alecto AI, the for-profit, and we also have the Alecto Foundation, the nonprofit. I made this promise to the world that I’m going to make the Alecto service free for individuals to use.

I do believe, as a survivor myself, you shouldn’t make money from people for suffering like this. Eventually our clients will be the government and also the platforms. I want to become a role model for the next generations and the women who are looking at this, knowing that this is possible.

I feel like I manifested a lot of these successes because in the beginning I was just a very vulnerable victim. I had no resources, no power. I was a VC, but that has nothing to do with activism. I was like, how am I going to change the law? But when I realized that if I don’t change the law, we are not going to go anywhere.

So I was just like, yes, let me do this. I was praying to the universe, just like, please give me an opportunity to speak up and it’s almost like a dream. I was invited to the White House and meeting not just one, but two presidents, and meeting with the first lady, and to create this law together. It’s just an incredible journey. And when I look back, I was like, what happened? What is going on?

That’s great.

EL KALIOUBY: Before Breeze and I ended our conversation, she shared a story from her family. It’s a hopeful one that shows that we’re resilient and that society can change – We wanted to leave you with this. …

Copy LinkWhy resilience and social change make ending online abuse possible

2: So I wanted to talk about my great grandmother. She was the reason why I didn’t commit suicide that day on the rooftop. So my great grandmother, she was born in 1908 during the last years of the Qing Dynasty in China. And her life was shaped by the norms and customs of a society that systemically devalued women. She never learned how to read or write, never left her hometown. And like many women of her time was expected to live in silence.

But she was the most resilient and incredible human being I have ever known. As a child, she endured the brutal practice of foot binding. It’s a custom designed to physically and socially restrict women because they break a young girl’s feet to make it stop growing. Foot binding wasn’t just about physical pain. It was about controlling women’s bodies and reducing their mobility and freedom. So my great grandmother also survived smallpox, which left her face permanently disfigured. And in a society where a woman’s value was largely determined by her appearance, this meant she could only marry into a poor family.

So she lived through the wars, the collapse of an empire, and the change of regimes, all while raising three children alone after her husband. My great-grandfather starved to death in a famine, and she endured unimaginable hardship, but she never gave up. She always held on to hope, even in the darkest of times.

And my great-grandmother passed away in 1999. And when I think about the transformation that she survived against all odds, in that moment on the rooftop, I decided to keep on fighting. Because of her strength and perseverance, 117 years after she was born, I get to join this conversation with you in front of a computer, educated, free and able to tell my story.

If we can end smallpox, if we can end foot binding, these brutal traditions and horrible diseases that have been around for thousands of years, I’m telling you we can end online abuse. Because of my great-grandmother, I believe in the possibilities.

Thank you. Thank you, Breeze, for joining us. What a powerful conversation and story. Thank you so much.