24-year-old startup founder exposed to nonconsensual explicit video and deepfakes on PornHub and Microsoft Azure cloud services leading to emotional distress and eight-month removal struggle

Summary

Breeze Liu, a 24-year-old startup founder, discovered in April 2020 that an explicit video of her, filmed without her consent when she was 17, had been uploaded to PornHub under the title “Korean teen.” Over time, the video spread across multiple pornographic websites and was allegedly used to create deepfake content. Liu faced severe emotional distress, including suicidal thoughts, as a result of the nonconsensual intimate content circulating online. Despite repeated requests, Microsoft did not remove approximately 150 explicit images of Liu from its Azure cloud services for months, only acting after Liu and a colleague confronted a senior Microsoft safety team member at a conference. The removal process, which took eight months, highlighted the challenges victims face in erasing such content from the web. Liu eventually founded Alecto AI in 2022 to develop tools to help combat digital abuse, and in 2023, she and her cofounder identified 832 links of intimate content featuring her.