# New York Seizes a Dozen Celebrity Deepfake Websites

> In what officials are calling the largest legal action of its kind, the Manhattan District Attorney's office has seized a dozen websites that hosted AI-generated sexual imagery of real people. District Attorney Alvin Bragg said the sites collectively used around 1,200 people's likenesses in hyper-realistic nonconsensual imagery, with the majority of targets being women in politics and entertainment. Seizing the domains is a concrete step in a fight that has mostly played out in warnings and takedown requests. Rather than chasing individual images, prosecutors went after the infrastructure, cutting off the sites that industrialized the abuse. That approach could become a template for other jurisdictions weighing how to respond. The case underscores how cheap and convincing deepfake tools have become, and how the harm falls disproportionately on women. Enforcement like this addresses the supply side, but it does not touch the underlying models or the demand, which is why advocates argue that seizures need to be paired with clearer laws and platform accountability.

_Section: [Daily AI Updates](https://www.wortins.com/daily-ai) · Source: Wired · Published Tuesday, September 15, 2026_

## Wortins' read

In what officials are calling the largest legal action of its kind, the Manhattan District Attorney's office has seized a dozen websites that hosted AI-generated sexual imagery of real people. District Attorney Alvin Bragg said the sites collectively used around 1,200 people's likenesses in hyper-realistic nonconsensual imagery, with the majority of targets being women in politics and entertainment. Seizing the domains is a concrete step in a fight that has mostly played out in warnings and takedown requests. Rather than chasing individual images, prosecutors went after the infrastructure, cutting off the sites that industrialized the abuse. That approach could become a template for other jurisdictions weighing how to respond. The case underscores how cheap and convincing deepfake tools have become, and how the harm falls disproportionately on women. Enforcement like this addresses the supply side, but it does not touch the underlying models or the demand, which is why advocates argue that seizures need to be paired with clearer laws and platform accountability.

## Source

[Read the full story at Wired](https://www.wired.com/story/new-york-seizes-a-dozen-celebrity-deepfake-websites/)

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