NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — A 22-year-old Long Island man was sentenced to six months in prison on Tuesday for creating and posting deepfake pornography using underage pictures of former high-school classmates, according to the Nassau County District Attorney’s Office.
Deepfake technology allows users to superimpose an image of a face onto video of a different person’s body. In this case, Patrick Carey created convincing videos of women performing sex acts who appeared to be acquaintances of his.
He would then post the videos online alongside identifying information like his victims’ full names, phone numbers and addresses. His posts often encouraged viewers to harass and threaten the women online.
In order to create the illicit videos, he would screenshot social media images of his 14 victims from when they were in high school or middle school.
Carey was posting the videos from August 2019 to within hours of his arrest in September 2021.
All of his victims attended MacArthur High School in Levittown, where Carey attended as a teenager.
His victims came to suspect Carey when they received notifications of their social media posts being screenshotted by him and then later found their likenesses in porn online.
In a separate incident, Carey posted an authentic sexually explicit image of an underage girl on the same website he posted the deepfakes too.
“Patrick Carey targeted these women, altering images he took from their social media accounts and the accounts of their family members and manipulating them using ‘deepfake’ technology to create pornography that he disseminated across the Internet,” said Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly. “These incredibly brave women pieced together his depraved conduct and brought it to the authorities.”
Carey pleaded guilty to sexual performance by a child, aggravated harassment, stalking and endangering the welfare of a child in December.
New York does not have any laws regulating deepfakes or other digitally manipulated pornography. Donnely argued this loophole should be addressed to prevent the manufacturing of porn that bears the likeness of children and blackmail.
In addition to the six-month prison sentence, Carey will be subject to 10 years post-release supervision and have to register as a sex offender. The judge also ordered an order of protection lasting eight years for each of his victims.
New York State currently has no criminal statutes addressing “deepfaked” or digitally manipulated images of a sexually explicit nature, leaving a significant loophole that can be exploited by child pornographers.
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