Manhattan seizes 12 sexual-deepfake sites in a jurisdictional test for online enforcement

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced the seizure of 12 websites hosting AI-generated non-consensual intimate imagery. His office says the sites used the likenesses of about 1,200 people—primarily celebrities and public figures—and calls the action the largest seizure of its kind.

New York has criminalized sexually explicit deepfakes since 2023. Bragg said his office can act when a site is accessible from Manhattan, an expansive jurisdictional theory for services that may be operated elsewhere. The office is investigating the people who used and ran the sites; seizure is not a conviction, and Bragg declined to say whether images of minors were involved because the investigation is continuing.

The emphasis on famous victims should not obscure the broader mechanism. The same tools can be used in domestic abuse to threaten or humiliate people with fewer resources to find and remove the material. Domain seizure can rapidly interrupt distribution, but copies, mirror sites and generators remain, so enforcement will depend on identifying operators and payment or hosting infrastructure.

This moves deepfake policy from takedown requests toward criminal infrastructure seizure. Its durability will turn on whether courts accept the jurisdictional basis and whether prosecutors can connect anonymous sites to responsible people.