Clothoff, one of the most popular sites using artificial intelligence to generate fake nude photos of real people, uses what are called redirect sites to trick online payment services, according to a researcher.

Millions visit the more than 100 “nudify” sites online each month, according to Graphika, a company that analyzes social networks. And it’s not clear who’s running Clothoff, according to Kolina Koltai, a senior researcher at the international investigative group Bellingcat. 

“There is a really inherent shadiness that’s happening,” she said. “They’re not being transparent about who owns it. They’re obviously trying to mask their payments.”

How Clothoff works 

Visitors to Clothoff are told that they must be 18 or older to use the website and that they can’t use other’s photos without permission. They’re also told they can’t use pictures of people who are under the age of 18. Clothoff claims on its website that: “processing of minors is impossible.”

“You’ll see, as we click accept, that there’s no verification. And now we’re already here,” Koltai said about entering the website. 

Explicit photos are shown right away after clicking accept. Generating a nude photo on Clothoff is free the first time. After that, it costs from $2-$40. 

There’s also a poses feature, which allows people to generate images of people in different sex poses. 

Clothoff and other “nudify” sites encourage customers to promote their services online, where users often show off their favorite before and after AI nudes on social media.

Koltai said she’s seen people post AI-generated nude images of what are clearly high school girls on social media. She says she’s done reverse image searches for the original photos. 

“And they’re, like, a high school girl’s, like, swim meet. You’ll see these are very clearly, these are minors, and adult content is being made of them nonconsensually, then also being posted on social media,” she said.

Payment methods on “nudify” sites

When 60 Minutes looked at the site with Koltai, we noticed there was a wide variety of payment options available on Clothoff, including PayPal, credit cards and Google Pay. 

In many cases, online payment services have policies barring their use for images like the ones generated on “nudify” sites, but the “nudify” sites have workarounds. Koltai found that Clothoff and other sites redirect their customers’ payments through phony websites, pretending to sell things like flowers and photography lessons. 

PayPal told 60 Minutes it banned Clothoff from its platform a year ago and shuts down the accounts for these redirect sites when they find them. The problem is Clothoff often just creates new ones.

More deception from “nudify” site

On its website, Clothoff lists a name, Grupo Digital, with an address in Buenos Aires, Argentina, implying that’s where Clothoff is based.

But when 60 Minutes went there, it turned out to be the office of a YouTube channel that covers politics. The employee that answered the door said she’d never heard of Clothoff and that they were not associated with them.

Clothoff also made up a fake CEO, Koltai discovered. She believes his headshot is AI-generated as well. 

“You look at the sophistication of these really large sites, it’s completely different than, say, some guy in a basement that set up a site that he’s trying to do it on his own,” Koltai said. “When these sites launched, and the way that they’ve been developing and going this past year, it is not someone’s first rodeo. It’s not the first time they set up a complex network.”

60 Minutes reached out to Clothoff via email, but no one ever responded.