In 2025, MrDeepfakes––long a central site for creating and trading AI-generated, non-consensual intimate images (NCII)––went offline. A week earlier, Congress passed S.126, the Take it Down Act, soon to become law. This bill makes publishing AI-generated NCII a federal crime and requires platforms to remove it within a strict timeframe. The timing made the link plain to reporters and policymakers, and warned other platforms of what might be ahead.

We examined what followed. Using a synthetic control approach, we measured changes in new users and new posts across three other platforms where AI-generated NCII remains active. Our hypothesis was that the bill and the shutdown would have no significant effect. In this talk, the results will be presented and set within the broader literature on crime crackdowns and the deplatforming of harmful online communities.

Bio:

Alejandro Cuevas is a researcher focused on the shady, suspicious, and illicit corners of the Internet––and how emerging technologies like generative AI both influence and are influenced by these spaces. He blends gonzo and computational social science: first-person fieldwork in underground communities paired with large-scale measurements. His work on darkweb marketplaces has informed criminal investigations and the development of law enforcement tools. More recently, he’s explored how generative AI is reshaping the online information ecosystem, including how people build audiences and craft political narratives––the latter as a research consultant at Microsoft Research. He earned his Ph.D. in societal computing from Carnegie Mellon University in 2025, where he was advised by Nicolas Christin and honored with a CyLab Presidential Fellowship. He holds a B.S. with honors from Penn State. Outside academia, he co-founded Redoux, a NYC-based fragrance brand.

You can find Alejandro Cuevas’s Substack here.

In-person attendance is open to Princeton University faculty, staff and students.

This talk will be livestreamed and recorded. The recording will be posted to the CITP website, the Princeton University Media Central channel and the CITP YouTube channel.

If you need an accommodation for a disability please contact Jean Butcher at butcher@princeton.edu.

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