New York Seizes a Dozen Celebrity Deepfake Sites

For years, celebrity deepfake websites operated with near impunity. But New York just delivered the most sweeping blow against them to date. On Monday, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office announced the seizure of 12 domains accused of unlawfully sharing, publishing, and selling nonconsensual explicit videos of famous women, and it's a move that officials say targets a practice they can't and won't ignore.

The action was carried out under New York's criminal procedure laws. It's likely the largest takedown of its kind since deepfake technology first appeared at the end of 2017, and that's a striking fact when you consider how long these platforms have operated in plain sight. It signals something new. Law enforcement is no longer treating these platforms as untouchable corners of the internet. They're not untouchable anymore.

Twelve Domains, 1,200 Victims

According to the district attorney's office, roughly 1,200 people appeared in nonconsensual sexual images and videos across the seized sites. The overwhelming majority were women. The list of targets reads like a cross-section of public life: social media influencers, actors, activists, athletes, musicians, and politicians.

District attorney Alvin Bragg didn't mince words. Not about the human cost. "These horrific violations of privacy follow victims into their careers and personal lives and take an immense toll on emotional and mental well-being," he said in a statement, making clear that the damage doesn't stop at the moment of the breach but instead trails people through job interviews, family dinners, and quiet nights when they can't stop wondering who's seen what. And he urged potential victims to come forward and contact his office's cybercrime bureau.

The office hasn't publicly named the 12 websites. But the takedown notices appeared before the announcement itself. Late last week, several of the sites' homepages were replaced with a stark message: "THIS DOMAIN HAS BEEN SEIZED." The sites now state they were taken over following a seizure warrant issued by a New York State Supreme Court, and they're saying it plainly, though the office hasn't named them yet.

A Dark Industry Built on Stolen Faces

What made these sites so damaging was their reach. Many carried names promising "real deepfakes" or "sex celebrity" content. One advertised that "various actresses' faces are used for deepfakes." Videos ran several minutes long and featured fully explicit scenes, often created by swapping a celebrity's face into existing pornographic footage.

Archived versions show some clips had been watched tens of thousands of times. Tens of thousands of times. One site claimed it's been online since 2018, and while that single claim tells us only so much on its own, it points to a much bigger picture that we can't ignore. The total viewership across all 12 platforms likely climbed into the millions.

Benjamin Shultz has spent years documenting deepfake abuse against political figures. He's the lead researcher at the nonprofit American Sunlight Project. And he'd encountered some of these sites during his work, the kind of material that stays with you long after you close the browser. Most videos took the shape of actual pornographic movies. They're manipulated to show targets' faces instead of the original actors. "Most videos took the shape of actual pornographic movies, manipulated to instead show targets' faces instead of the original actors," he said.

His research found something disturbing. Many videos weren't original. They're reposts from MrDeepFakes, a notorious platform taken offline after its creators were unmasked by reporters. And on at least two of the seized sites, elected officials were given dedicated profiles listing their name and position alongside a grid of manipulated videos, a detail that shows just how targeted and personal this abuse of technology has become.

Through recent research, Shultz says 56 European politicians had been mentioned or appeared on the websites, including 16 US politicians and two based in the UK.

Why Enforcement Finally Caught Up

For years, victims faced a frustrating reality. The technology to create convincing fake videos improved faster than the laws to stop them. Celebrities spoke openly. They described the harms of being depicted in this content and the difficulty of getting it removed, and they're not alone in that struggle. Meanwhile, a sprawling industry of websites, apps, and bots emerged, capable of "undressing" photos or generating graphic sexual videos in seconds. And it's still growing.

Important. The legal landscape has started to shift. The US Take It Down Act increasingly allows images to be removed, and part of the law empowers law enforcement officials to take down and seize websites. That tool appears to be exactly what New York used.

Leonie Oehmig called the takedowns a major win. She's a researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, and she's studied the deepfake creation ecosystem, so she knows what she's talking about when she says this matters. The seized sites aren't accessible. Not even through VPNs. And she noted that this holds true even when people try to connect from other locations, which means the takedowns are cutting off access in a way that's hard to get around.

"This shows that meaningful, coordinated enforcement is achievable even where regulation itself remains fragmented across jurisdictions," Oehmig said.

Her point cuts to the heart of why these operations have proven so resilient. The tools used to create synthetic nonconsensual intimate imagery, the discovery and promotion of that content, the hosting and technical infrastructure, and the payment systems that let operators monetize it all sit in different legal territories. Knocking out one layer does not collapse the whole structure.

What Happens to the People Behind the Sites

The seizure is not the end of the story. The Manhattan District Attorney's Office says its investigations into who is responsible for the websites, plus those who uploaded damaging videos of victims, are ongoing. No arrests have been announced.

Accountability stays unresolved. Seizing a domain removes a platform, but the people who built it and the users who uploaded content may still be out there, and that's a gap the office can't close by taking down a single site. So the office's cybercrime bureau is now inviting victims to come forward. That step could strengthen future prosecutions.

Oehmig argues that lasting progress requires hitting the ecosystem at multiple points simultaneously.

• The creation tools that generate synthetic explicit content
• The discovery and promotion channels that drive traffic to it
• The hosting and technical infrastructure that keeps sites online
• The payment and affiliate systems that let operators profit

Each link is a pressure point. Enforcement against any single one can slow the machine, but it can't dismantle it, because only coordinated action across all of them can meaningfully take the whole thing apart. The New York seizures show the hosting layer is vulnerable. But can investigators reach the layers above and below it? That remains to be seen.

For the roughly 1,200 people whose faces were used without consent, the takedown offers something rare: a measure of relief. The sites are gone, at least for now. The videos may persist elsewhere, copied and archived across the internet. But the message from New York is unmistakable. These platforms are no longer operating in a legal vacuum, and the people who run them should be watching their backs.