In short
The Guardian Investigates’ Black Box episode 2 follows the hunt for ClothOff, an AI deepfake porn app that lets users upload photos of girls/women and generate nude images for a fee, then uses anonymous payment channels to stay hidden.
Guest backgrounds
Miriam Aladib is a Spanish “rebel gynecologist” with ~150,000 Instagram followers who reported the abuse after her 14-year-old daughter showed her realistic AI-generated nude images. Prosecutor Francisco Javier Montero Juánez is a Spanish prosecutor handling the case involving teenage boys and victims. Sergi Cherimush is a Ukrainian entrepreneur in the US (California) who says his company was approached for payments/marketing help. Rick Ellis is a software/digital modeler listed on a linked site (AI Imagecraft/Texture Oasis) who says the business listings were fake. “Al” and “Dasha” are Telegram accounts tied to the app’s operators; Dasha Babicheva is identified via social media as living in Minsk/Belarus.
Key claims
ClothOff was used in Almendra Lejo (Spain) and linked to a New Jersey case; police suspected Eastern Europe-based creators; the app’s operator(s) used virtual offices and shell companies (Texture Oasis/AI Imagecraft) to route payments; UK access was later blocked. The operator denies under-18 capability and denies links to the payment entities.
Notable examples
Almendra Lejo WhatsApp sharing and threats/ransom; the app’s website “undress any photo with AI” pricing (~£8.50 for 25 images); Telegram/Instagram traces leading to Alexander Babichow and Dasha Babicheva; payment processor risk flag by one provider.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOThe Search for Clothoff
0:58 to 2:56
The host describes the search for an AI business related to deepfake technology.
“Today's episode contains a little bit of swearing.”
Miriam's Story
2:56 to 5:10
Introduction of Miriam, who shares her experience with the deepfake app affecting her daughter.
“This is Black Box, Episode 2, The Hunt for Clothoff.”
The Impact of Clothoff
5:10 to 7:30
Miriam explains the emotional and social consequences of the deepfake images.
“But none of that prepared her for what happened last September.”
Police Response and Investigation
7:30 to 9:07
Discussion on the police investigation into the deepfake incidents in Spain.
“Some refused to leave their house for weeks.”
Legal Ramifications of AI Misuse
9:07 to 10:48
Exploration of the legal challenges surrounding AI misuse and the responsibility of app creators.
“and his job was to figure out who would face criminal charges.”
Global Patterns of Abuse
10:48 to 12:11
The host discusses similar incidents of deepfake abuse occurring internationally.
“But Francisco said there is someone who, in his view, had broken the law.”
Investigating the Clothoff App
12:11 to 14:01
The team delves into the Clothoff app's website and its operations.
“I did start crying because I was very emotional.”
Investigating Clothoff's Operations
14:01 to 17:10
Explore how Clothoff communicates with users and their app's purpose.
“It costs about£8.50 to create 25 pictures.”
Uncovering Clothoff's Address
17:11 to 20:07
The team visits a suspicious location linked to Clothoff's registration.
“We asked about the obvious ways this app could cause real harm in the world.”
Finding Texture Oasis
20:08 to 23:30
Discovering a shadowy company connected to Clothoff's financials.
“offers anyone based anywhere in the world an official address in London.”
Show all 21 chapters
The Impact of Deepfakes and Legislation
23:31 to 24:59
Learn about the growing concern and legal actions against deepfakes.
“that was all being spent on architectural graphics when it was really being used on deep fake news of women and girls around the world.”
Interview with Sergi Cherimush
25:00 to 28:05
Sergi shares his background and involvement with the Clothoff app.
“This whole time, it felt like they'd been one step ahead of us.”
Investigating Klothoff: Initial Insights
28:05 to 29:23
Learn about the initial investigation into Klothoff and its connections.
“Then I moved us on to the point of the call, the thing I really wanted to ask about.”
Sergi's Unusual Agreement
29:23 to 30:40
Sergi, linked to Klothoff, surprisingly offers to assist the investigation.
“and maybe this would be a chance to promote his businesses in the media.”
Uncovering Telegram Leads
30:40 to 34:08
Discovering leads through Telegram accounts connected to Klothoff.
“They included screenshots of conversations between his company and people who work for Klothoff.”
Identifying Alexander Babichow
34:08 to 35:36
Connecting the dots to identify Alexander Babichow linked to Klothoff.
“As we scrolled through her Instagram, which was still public at this point, we found a lot of photos of this one guy.”
Confronting Alex: The Phone Call
35:36 to 38:01
A tense phone call with Alex reveals contradictions and denials.
“So look, maybe they're just two different people who happen to be in the same cities at the same time.”
Aftermath of the Call
38:01 to 40:21
Following the call, Klothoff takes drastic measures to obscure its presence.
“I don't know where you took this information, but you're totally making mistakes.”
Wider Implications of the Investigation
40:21 to 42:03
Exploring the broader issues raised by Klothoff and its impact on victims.
“A few days later, Klothoff blocked access to its website in the UK.”
The Rise of Deepfake Technology
42:03 to 43:19
Explore the expanding impact and implications of deepfake technology.
“They've gone to incredible lengths to stay hidden.”
Preparedness Against Deepfake Threats
43:22 to 44:01
Learn about the necessary steps to combat the challenges posed by deepfakes.
“I don't know how we're going to sort fact from fiction.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00This is The Guardian.
0:07Hey, this is Michael Safi, host of The Guardian Investigates, and I have some news. We've made a brand new series of Black Box, our chart-topping podcast about the way AI is reshaping our lives. This time, it's about this sort of extraordinary change that's happened right under our noses. More than a billion people suddenly talking to machines, sharing with them their deepest secrets. Maybe you are too. Black Box, the chatbots, is coming very soon on the Guardian Investigates feed. And because Today in Focus is off this week, we're bringing you the first season of Black Box instead. These episodes are exactly as we broadcast them back in 2024.
0:50And just to note, some of the laws and regulations around AI that we talk about in the episode have been amended since then. Black Box is next.
1:04Before we begin, just a heads up. Today's episode contains a little bit of swearing.
1:12Straight up here and right. Okay. For the last few months, I feel like I've been wandering through a hall of mirrors. Especially on this one day, a few weeks ago, when I was walking around London with producers Josh Kelly and Alex Atak. Looking for an AI business, who by this point, we'd been trying to track down for months. Shall we push the button? Let's do it, yeah. Finding ourselves in dark basements of Victorian buildings. My name's Michael. I'm a journalist. I'm looking for a business... In winding corridors of faceless office blocks. It's unfortunate I won't be able to give you any details, but they're not located in here.
1:55Knocking on doors with handwritten labels and nobody behind them. Being met with nothing but blank stares. Are the inspectors that put someone on the inspectors? No, we're just trying to find a business, basically, that's registered to this building. We were looking for a company that distorts reality. the people behind a product the world's never really seen before. One that someone might be using right now in your office, in your school, that gives them a power to expose you against your will, and which police and lawmakers around the world are baffled about how to deal with. We wanted to figure out who was behind this thing.
2:37Can we get to the truth? and along the way realised that very question might be about to slip out of our grasp.
2:56From The Guardian, I'm Michael Safi. This is Black Box, Episode 2, The Hunt for Clothoff.
3:07Okay, it used to be believed none of what you hear and only half of what you see. What you are looking at here is a fabricated, computer-generated image of an event that did not happen. Looks like me, sounds like me, you may say. False depictions. When the hell did I say that? Now with the rise of AI. What you're seeing is not real. Strange, isn't it?
3:47Okay, so... Can you just describe what we're seeing? So... We're just driving through... Pretty kind of small street now, past the pharmacy... A few older people walking around. It's a Saturday, so it's pretty quiet. Last year, as we were trying to get our heads around AI, we heard about this story about something that had happened in this small Spanish town called Almendra Lejo. Here we are. Most people there didn't want to talk about it, but this one woman did. Hola. Hola. We met Miriam Aladib at her gynaecology clinic in the centre of the town. Hola. Me, Alex Atak, who's producing this series, And Mateo Fagotto, a journalist.
4:32He was helping us to translate.
4:37Miriam, by the way, was more comfortable speaking to us in Spanish. So from now on, you'll hear a voice actor.
4:50Well, like most parents, I've given phones to my daughters. I've always tried to set rules and alert them to possible abuse. Miriam gets technology. She uses Instagram to give women information about their bodies that even in the 2020s, they might not be getting from their school or from their doctors. She calls herself a rebel gynecologist, and she's got 150 ,000 followers. But none of that prepared her for what happened last September. She'd been travelling, and when she got home, her daughter, who's 14, said she needed to tell her about something that had been happening at school. And as soon as I got home, she told me, Mum, there's something I want to tell you.
5:33And she showed me the images. Well, it's a shock when you see it, because the image is completely realistic. It seemed real. What she was looking at on the screen was an image of her child, naked. It looked real, but Miriam knew it just couldn't be. Because I know my daughter's body. If I didn't know my daughter's body, I would have thought this image was real. The pictures had been made using an app powered by artificial intelligence called ClothOff. It lets you upload pictures of any woman or any girl that you've taken yourself or from someone's social media. Put it into the app, and for a price, the AI gives you back the same pictures without clothes.
6:21Miriam's daughter told her that over the summer holidays, a group of boys in the town had started downloading the app and feeding it pictures of her and her classmates, taken from their social media. Some guy told my daughter, I've seen you in the WhatsApp group naked. And she asked him to send her the photo. She wanted to see what was going on. And they sent it to her. Quickly, it became clear that this hadn't just happened to a couple of girls. There were dozens of these fake naked pictures of young girls from four different schools in Elmendra Alejo, all being shared in a WhatsApp group. The first weekend she went out on the street, she ran into the boy who did that to her.
7:03And that boy was with two other boys. One of these other two kids said, laughing, I'm going to take photos of you. Some of the girls were being threatened, told they had to pay money, some kind of ransom, for their picture not to be shared. Miriam talked about this feeling of violation, wondering where these photos had ended up. Were they going to live forever in some dark corner of the internet? The girls were devastated. Some refused to leave their house for weeks.
7:41This is Miriam at the time speaking on her Instagram, Using other people's images to do this barbarity and spread it, she says, it's a very serious crime.
7:56You can hear how furious she is. Girls, she says, don't be afraid to report this stuff. Tell your mothers. Miriam's post quickly went viral, and journalists from all over Spain started arriving in the town.
8:20The police launched an investigation, though Miriam said, at least initially, it felt like they were trying to just downplay the whole thing. This is audio from a police event around that time. The chief of police in the town says, the people who publicise this haven't thought about the impact on these kids. But he's not talking about the girls. He means the boys who made the pictures, who he says have been treated like, in his words, terrorists.
8:58Despite what they were saying in public, in the background, police were taking this seriously. They were gathering evidence. And after a couple of weeks, they handed a 200-page case file to the state's prosecutor, and his job was to figure out who would face criminal charges.
9:22The office of prosecutor Francisco Javier Montero Juánez was lined floor to ceiling with legal textbooks and watched over by a giant oil painting of a Catholic saint, which, pretty intimidating. Francisco told us he had decades of experience and cases involving pictures like these weren't new to him. But obviously this case was different. He said it might be the first crime involving AI in all of Spain. When he got the dossier from the police, he began investigating 26 teenage boys for offences against 21 girls.
10:03Though this situation is new, and Spain doesn't have specific laws about misusing AI, Francisco said he could probably find the laws that would fit. But there are all these other questions. Like, in this case, the images weren't made by adults, but by other kids. And maybe those kids needed to be punished, rehabilitated. But even if you could charge them with criminal offences, should you? It sounds as if the technological abilities of these boys or the technology they have access to is far more advanced than their own ethical and moral development. Si, si, si, si. This was all completely uncharted territory.
10:48A messy collision between people and AI. But Francisco said there is someone who, in his view, had broken the law.
11:00It was whoever had made the app that gave the boys this terrible power. I've never seen an app that invites you to commit a crime, he said. But going after them, you hit a different hurdle.
11:16Francisco said his office suspected the creators of this app were based somewhere in Eastern Europe, maybe Ukraine, maybe Russia. But that's all they knew so far. And without more, there was no way to go after them.
11:34Back in London, we decided to spend some time looking into this app, Clothoff. At first we thought, maybe Almendra Leho was unlucky. A bunch of kids somehow got their hands on this app and caused havoc. And then... We started to see the same story in other places.
12:03Canada, Brazil, Australia. Incidents like this are becoming common, with teenage girls often the target. And a case in America, in New Jersey. I couldn't believe my ears. I'm not going to lie. I did start crying because I was very emotional. And according to legal documents, the app that was used at that New Jersey school, that was Klothoff. All of these stories focused on the kids who had generated the images and the girls who were the victims. And they treated the AI like it was some kind of bystander. Unstoppable, like a force of nature. As if there wasn't a human being behind it all. Maybe some guy in his bedroom causing this chaos and making money off it.
12:49And it made me wonder, who is this person? Could we find them and make them part of the story too? So obviously we can start digging into the website itself to see if there are clues there. We started with their website. I asked my colleague Manisha Ganguly to help. She's an investigations correspondent with The Guardian, and this kind of thing is right up her alley. So is it a quick and dirty job, or have they put tot into it? Klothoff's website, unsurprisingly, is very grim. Allows you to remove all unnecessary elements of clothing from the image. The front page has this animation. It's a woman in what looks like an office.
13:28And at first, this woman is wearing a red suit. But then, as this laser moves down her body, the clothes disappear. Klothoff isn't hiding what this app is for. Its tagline is undress any photo with AI. And when you click through, it explains how all of this works. They're saying it's a neural network, which is a breakthrough in AI. So just buzzwords, buzzwords. You pay money to buy credits that they call VIP coins. And you use those coins to upload pictures to the app or the website. And you get back a naked image. It costs about£8.50 to create 25 pictures. And another thing that's clear right away is that the website has been really carefully built to give nothing away about who's behind it or where they might be based.
14:14They talk to their customers through these anonymous channels on social media. Is this on the Telegram channel? Clothoff channel? Yeah, if you push preview. Alex was there and so was Josh Kelly, the executive producer of this series. So now they're basically like doing updates. Oh my God, they've got 773 ,000 subscribers. Clothoff has its own Twitter feed, a busy Telegram channel. 4.3 thousand hearts, 1.4 thousand thumbs up. It even polls its users on new features, like whether they want to be able to change the body shape of the people they're undressing. It all felt pretty bleak. And strangely enough, the website included an email for media.
14:51Is it worth emailing them? I mean, what is the chance they're going to reply to that, though? Send them an email and find out. So Alex sent an email with his phone number on it. And the next day, he said he had an update. okay so you know the guys from cloth off yes yes last night i got a message on whatsapp they got back to you yeah they got back to me a day later firstly it's from a uk number uh-huh interesting but i have a feeling that might just be like a disguised number okay but they sent me their answers as voice notes as voice i'll play them for you okay okay Dear Alex, hello. Thank you for your questions.
15:33I personally would be glad to take a part of your podcast. This is a disguised voice. Yeah, that's what I thought. One of the questions we had asked was, why create an app like this? About the general idea of our project. Well, that's kind of easy. The main purpose of our project is to give people positive emotions. Do you think he's reading? I think he's reading. And show them that they don't need to be ashamed of nudity, especially if it was made by neural networks, by an AI. The tone of their responses is like as if they're an app that like superimposes you on a beach in Bali or something. It's like a kind of fun AI filter to share with your friends, like not an app that...
16:23He's causing mayhem in the lives of teenagers right now. Yeah, definitely doesn't understand. It seems that they don't understand the kind of gravity of what their app could be used for. That's also answers on who is our target audience, as you asked. It is people who have a positive attitude to new technologies and they can laugh together on the results they're getting from AI. The app was supposed to help people not feel ashamed of their bodies, he said. It's for people to get together and laugh about these pictures. This was hard to swallow. Well, that's it. I'd like to thank you again for reaching out to us.
17:03We kept asking them to get on a call, and they kept finding excuses not to. But every now and then, they'd pop back up with new messages. Hello again. I'm sorry for such a long response. We asked about the obvious ways this app could cause real harm in the world. What did they think of that? Seems nobody cares when they get spam messages about lotteries they won or because from their far-leadies they never heard about. It would be funny if people blame email services for that. If you couldn't make that out, he said, blaming us for what others do with our app is like blaming Gmail if somebody sends you spam.
17:43ClothOff just make the tool available. What you do with it, that's up to you. They were happy to send us this kind of stuff all day. But when we asked them who they were, where they were from, nothing. Speaking of your last question about myself, I'm not into sharing it, really, since I never wanted to be a made-up person or something. And that's pretty much all we got. But at some point, while we were talking, other clues started to surface.
18:16For some reason, late last year, a company name appeared on the Clothoff website. It was almost hidden in tiny text right at the bottom. And it turns out it was registered to an address in London, like a tube stop away from The Guardian. And we thought, maybe someone had added this by mistake, slipped up, and now we knew where to find these guys. So, on a freezing day in the middle of winter in London, we decided we should go and see what was there. Okay, so we're in Hatton Garden in London, which is the diamond district of the city. It led us to Hatton Garden, which is famous in London for its diamond and gold, and its history as a hotspot for organised crime.
18:56Yeah. Shall we go inside? Through some glass doors, we were met by a security guard watching Instagram reels on his phone. We told him the company we were looking for, and he just waved us through. We piled into this dank little elevator. One with this thick, caramel-coloured carpet, lining the floors, the walls, and the ceiling. It all felt a little bit off. On the fifth floor, there was this long corridor lined with doors, lots of them leading to the offices of diamond and gold dealers. Except for one, the place we were looking for. Written in blue pen and nailed to the wall. Marked by a piece of paper with a handwritten number 23, nailed to the door.
19:42So we knocked.
19:47And nothing. Nobody there. Are you expecting, is it someone expecting? No, we're just trying to find a business basically that's registered to this building. It turns out this creepy room in a plain office building in East London was the registered address of not just Klothoff, but 6 ,000 other companies. It was a virtual office, the kind of place that, for about£30 a year, offers anyone based anywhere in the world an official address in London. Many of the businesses that use these kinds of addresses are legitimate, but if you're a company doing something shady, It has the upside that if journalists show up at your door trying to meet someone or get a peek inside, there's nothing to see.
20:30This is a world I didn't know existed, but like this maze of businesses in London that don't really exist or aren't really where they say they are. And you go to look for them and you end up with just blank stairs or blank doors. It's just like, what is this?
Read the full transcript
20:49We left with the feeling that we'd been on a wild goose chat. A goose chase that somebody, somewhere, had wanted us to go on. As the weeks went on, we were starting to realise whoever we were looking for had gone to a lot of effort to hide their tracks. And then we learned just how deeply those tracks were buried. One day, we were talking to a guy in the office called Phil McMahon, who's a software developer who works with the digital investigations team. And he told us, you guys are just looking at the surface of the website. And he offered to poke around under the hood. Testing, one, two, three.
21:27Right, OK. The first thing he found was there was another website with Klothoff's fingerprints all over it. It gets technical, but it appears they were both run by the same people. Say, let's go onto the web app and then... It was called AI Imagecraft. And we had the idea, what if we bought something from both of these websites and followed where the money went? We started with Clothoff. Say, and let's try MasterCard. And the transactions come up as Texture Oasis. Texture Oasis, as in that's who you've just paid? Yeah, so it's all one word, Texture Oasis. Texture Oasis, a completely new name. And then we bought something from that other website, AI Imagecraft.
22:16And that came up as another Texture Oasis. Really? Yeah. Both websites led to an account called Texture Oasis, which we discovered is some kind of architectural materials business with its own website. It had a listed address in London, another virtual office, it turns out, and a list of staff. So we got in touch with one of the people listed as an employee. Yeah, I'm definitely not an employee. This is Rick Ellis. On the Texture Oasis website, he's listed as a 3D modeler, which is actually his job, just not at Texture Oasis, a business he'd never heard of. This definitely resembles more of the scam type deal.
23:02But what he did tell us is that it looked like everything on Texture Oasis was a lie. He knew of some of the other people listed as employees. None of them worked there. All of the text had been copied word for word from another legitimate architectural design website. where they're just straight up saying these people are part of our organisation that have nothing to do with it. The whole thing was a sham. An entirely fake business designed to disguise payments to cloth off. To make it look to Mastercard or Visa or whoever was processing the payments that was all being spent on architectural graphics when it was really being used on deep fake news of women and girls around the world.
23:43And Rick's name had been dragged into it. Realising that that's also, oh my goodness, you know, connected with something much worse is, I feel disgusting.
24:00As we wandered through that hall of mirrors, trying to guess what was real and what was an illusion, stories about AI deepfakes kept piling up. You or your kids may have seen or heard about those graphic AI generated fake images of Taylor Swift. And governments were starting to act. The Online Safety Act introduced new offences which criminalise the sharing of or threatening to share intimate images, including deep fakes, without consent. In the UK at the end of January, creating or sharing these kinds of non-consensual images became a crime. In the US, Congress was holding hearings, talking about changing the law to make it possible to punish people for creating or sharing deepfakes.
24:50And Klothoff was still sending us messages, including that, as they put it, their value had nearly doubled since the start of our investigation. Their website was getting more than 4 million page views a month. They sounded delighted. This whole time, it felt like they'd been one step ahead of us. They'd been so careful. But maybe not careful enough.
25:20We were sitting around again with Manisha, going over the same clues, looking for something we had missed when we noticed the Clothoff website had been updated. Oh, that's weird. Mike. That old company name that had led us to the virtual office in London. It had been replaced. And this is new, by the way. There was no BS Europe the last time we looked at this. BS Europe, a company that appeared to be based in Estonia, linked to someone's name. And then when we search for BS Europe, on the Estonian registry, we see that BS Europe OU is actually registered to Sergei Cherimush. Sergei Cherimush, a Ukrainian entrepreneur living in the US with a pretty detailed footprint on social media.
26:08Sergei might have grown up in Eastern Europe, but he had found himself in California, where it looked like he had gone full tech bro. In videos on his Instagram, he dances shirtless, wearing a glow stick necklace at parties in the desert. He DJs. He goes to Burning Man. And alongside that, he runs a lot of different businesses, including in AI. So we sent him an email, got in touch over LinkedIn, contacted his business partners. Nothing. And then, after a few days, actually, when we were in the studio recording a different episode. The executive producer is Josh Kelly. The commissioning editor is Nicole Jackson.
26:50music oh Josh are you still rolling? I got a phone call yep
26:58hello hello hello coming up Sergi and the screenshots
27:15Hi so Sergi this is Katerina she's a colleague and she'll be helping to translate, if that's okay. A few days later, Sergi Cherimush agreed to sit down with us over Zoom for an interview. Yeah, you're in California right now? Yeah, yeah. I live in Redonda Beach now. It's beach cities in Los Angeles. He was more comfortable speaking in Russian, his first language, so he had an interpreter with us, Katarina. It'd be great to start by... I mean, why don't you tell us a little bit about you, your story, your career... Sergi said he'd always been an entrepreneur. We created the mobile app, the drink, in exchange for the selfie.
27:57So the person could take a selfie of himself and then exchange it for the alcohol. Very innovative. Then I moved us on to the point of the call, the thing I really wanted to ask about. It'd be good to understand, I mean, what is your involvement with Klopov? what's your you know what's your link to it uh his answer took a while it's complicated um actually uh up until you contacted up until michael contacted me uh i've never heard about Now, this company, Klothoff, it kind of, well, let's put it simply, I was not interested in this company because it was outside my tunnels of the reality. Though Klothoff was outside his tunnels of reality, Sergi said people from the app had reached out to his company, BS Europe, or Bestseller, for help with setting up a payment system and with marketing.
29:02And Sergi says they never started the work. One of the payment providers that Sergi uses flagged Klothoff as a reputational risk and denied them access to their system. And Sergi said, that was that. He and I spoke for nearly an hour. For us, this was a big moment, but Sergi seemed unusually relaxed about it all. I think he agreed to talk because he thought this was some minor mix-up and maybe this would be a chance to promote his businesses in the media. But when I explained to him what we were investigating, The way Klothov, this business with his company's name on their website, had been used in Spain and New Jersey.
29:40I could see his demeanor change. This was really serious.
29:51Sure, because it's in my interest that our company won't be involved in any suspicious activities. It won't have a bad reputation. So, of course, it's in my own interest to provide you with information in my own turn. And in a turn that none of us saw coming, the guy we had suspected might be the man behind Klothoff, told us. He wanted to help us find out who was. Yeah, like, I'll inquire and make a request and I'll share whatever we find out. We hung up. And honestly, I wasn't sure what to make of Sergei. In the days after, he sent us copies of emails that appeared to confirm that his business hadn't actually done any work for Klothoff, though it's impossible to independently verify that.
30:39But one morning, I woke up to see, Sergei had sent me a bunch of messages overnight. They included screenshots of conversations between his company and people who work for Klothoff. Of course, the thought crossed our mind that they may have been fabricated. And then we saw where they led us. In the office, I got everyone together to tell them about it, including our editor, Nicole Jackson. He says he has been in touch with the people who run Clothoff, his company's contacts from Clothoff. It turns out they've been dealing with them only through Telegram. Oh. So all they have are their Telegram profiles and nicknames.
31:24Right. Sergi's screenshots showed two really interesting telegram accounts. One was someone with the name Al, like A.L. No surname. And according to the screenshots, this guy Al, he was Klothoff's founder. And he had been posting videos to this account. So we started going through them. More photos from his hotel room. Looks very nice. Wow. Klothoff is doing well. Yeah. Al looked like he had this jet-set lifestyle, posting pictures and videos from around the world, from fancy hotels in Hong Kong and Macau, cruising in luxury yachts, pitch-side seats at football games. And it goes on, but this is from October.
32:09They are... But Al was clever. None of these videos ever showed his face. And then there was that other account in the screenshots. One with the name Dasha. And this Dasha account was discussing things like Klothoff's application to banks, partnerships between them and other businesses. It had a profile picture, one that showed a young woman throwing up the peace sign. She also has this photo Dasha does outside a Beatles bar in Cuba. Some beach town in Cuba, Varadera it looks like. Unlike Al, it looked like this Dasha account had made a mistake. Whoever it was hadn't listed their surname. But the thing about the internet is everything you post leaves a trace somewhere.
33:01And there are ways to look back in time. And so while this Dasha account didn't have a surname now, a few months ago, it did. Username Dunyasha B. Dasha Babicheva with a phone number. This is our Dasha, I think. Dasha Babicheva. Apparently a young woman living in Belarus. and that name and phone number led us to an account on Instagram. This is her. This is her. Oh, have you got a different... Yeah. Oh, yeah, there you go. That looks more like her. Ah. This is her. And she's in Minsk. So we've got her Instagram. Yeah, and she's in Minsk. Whoa. Gosh, she's so young. And there it is. Oh, there's the Beatles.
33:42Oh, my God. Yeah, yeah. The Beatles pub. Yeah. An Instagram account with the exact same picture as the one on Telegram. A young woman in a COVID mask throwing up the peace sign outside a pub in Cuba. And there it was, for the first time in months, a face. The name of a person who all our leads suggested worked for Clothoff. As we scrolled through her Instagram, which was still public at this point, we found a lot of photos of this one guy. Someone identified as her brother. Someone whose nickname might be Al. Oh my God. Oh, stop it. Alexander. Where, where, where, where? There, Alexander. The name on that Instagram account?
34:30Alexander Babichow. Figures, there's nothing. Oh, shit. What? AI Imagecraft owner, Alexander Babichow. Oh, wow. And when we searched for this new name, Alexander Babichow, we discovered someone by that name is listed as the owner of a website. The website of a business called AI Imagecraft. Remember them? That Klothoff sister website that Phil McMahon had found. A website whose payments went to the same place as Klothoff. And the name registered as its owner? Alexander Babichow. And get this, we also found a Telegram account in Babichow's name. There were videos on it, including from recent trips to Hong Kong and Macau.
35:19And when we looked back at those videos posted by Al, supposedly Clothoff's founder, it looked like he had been in Hong Kong and Macau on exactly the same days. They had both posted pictures from the same hotel. So look, maybe they're just two different people who happen to be in the same cities at the same time. or both these accounts belong to the same person. After a bit more digging, we found a phone number that we believed belonged to Alexander Babichow. After six months, this was as close as we'd ever been to the people behind Klothoff.
36:17Hello. Hello, is that Alex? Yeah. Hey, Alex. My name is Michael Safi. I'm a journalist with The Guardian. Uh-huh. You're the guy who runs Cloth Off, right?
36:35What is Cloth Off? What is it? Clothoff is an AI app that you run with Dasha Babicheva. You're mad, man. I think you make a mistake. Alex, you were traveling recently, right? You were in Hong Kong and Macau. No. How odd, because your telegram lists you as having been in those places. You posted pictures on your telegram from those places. I'm calling you because we've been looking for you for a few months. And now we finally get to talk to you. I don't have any relations with the close-off. I don't even know what is it. I asked him about Dasha, who on social media is named as his sister. Who is Dasha?
37:44Dasha is your sister.
37:50Man, I think, I think, but you are a little bit mad. So please, check your contacts and never call me, okay? I don't know where you took this information, but you're totally making mistakes. I don't think we are. We got this information from your LinkedIn. From my LinkedIn? Yeah. I don't have a LinkedIn. See, I don't think that's the case, Alexander. I know you've tried to remain anonymous, but there's a lot of information about you online. So I'm wondering, do you have anything you want to say to us about the app ClothOff? Okay. I have a proposal to you. Let's talk in text, okay? Why in text?
38:51Why can't we talk properly? Because I'm working right now. I can't speak to you. Okay? Are you working on cloth off? No, I don't work in cloth off. Where do you work? Man, you are so annoying. I think we can finish our conversation. I told you that I'm not the owner of cloth off. I don't know what site is it. In my LinkedIn, it told I'm not working at cloth off, if you know. So what do you want from me? You're so fucking annoying. Man, just stop it. I think it would just be easier for... And he's hung up.
39:39About two hours after that call, we got another message from Klothoff. By now, they had given up on those weird, distorted voice notes. The message just said, please stop contacting our team through other channels. Al, the telegram account from Sergi's screenshots, took down all the videos he'd posted from around the world. Then he blocked us. The Babichow telegram account also blocked us. The LinkedIn account in his name was changed. It no longer says he lives in Belarus. Now it says he lives in Australia. When we called the number listed on the Dasha Instagram account, no one answered. But shortly after, the account was turned private.
40:21A few days later, Klothoff blocked access to its website in the UK. As of right now, it's no longer accessible.
40:39Earlier this week, we got back in touch with Miriam, told her what we'd found and got on a call.
40:55Miriam told us, in her words, she was relieved to finally see names attached to this app. She said, if she could, she'd talk to these people herself. Maybe they don't know what they're doing, she said. But she wishes they just knew the harm they were causing.
41:20We kept talking and Miriam told me that since she told her daughter's story on Instagram last autumn, and in her words, explosive wave of people from all around the world had been in touch with her. So many that she hasn't been able to get to them all yet. People saying, this happened to me too, or to my daughter. People really struggling, who don't know what to do. When we started this whole thing, we were looking probably for a single person. In my head, this sad guy sitting in his basement, sending us these ridiculous voice notes. But it quickly became clear this was much more than that. Clothoff is a sophisticated operation.
42:04They've gone to incredible lengths to stay hidden. They're probably a network of people, maybe in different countries, and we've just revealed some of them. And ClothOff is just one app, the first to corner the market. Since we've been making this, a month didn't go by without some competitor popping up, other apps doing exactly the same thing. Soon, there'll be 10 times as many. There'll be even more powerful, maybe even able to do video. And when Miriam used that word, wave, it really struck me. Doing this story has felt like standing on the beach, watching this great wave build in the distance.
42:47And the things that we've seen in Spain and New Jersey and so many other places are just these tiny ripples breaking off it and crashing to shore. But that wave is still out there, growing. Not just deepfake porn, but fake videos of politicians, fake audio of your voice on the phone to your bank, of atrocities that look real but never happened. Deepfake everything all the time. And when that wave sweeps through, I don't know how we're going to sort fact from fiction. Genuinely. I don't know how we're going to do it.
43:38Miriam said she felt that fear too, that pessimism. But she said all we can do is be ready, update our laws, and keep going after the people who might be behind these apps, as hard as it may be. We can't just stand with our arms crossed, she said. We need to make their lives. as hard as possible.
44:07On the next episode of Black Box, what happens when an AI company kills your boyfriend? I was crushed. It was like the seven months that we had been talking. It just didn't mean anything. It's just like, pfft, just gone.
44:28To read the story we published about this investigation, go to theguardian.com. In a written response to our questions for this episode, the person operating the Clothoff press account denied that their app was used in either Spain or New Jersey, and said it was impossible to create images of under-18s using their technology. They said they had no relation to the company Texture Oasis, but declined to explain why payments made to their website were directed to accounts in that name. They denied any connection to Alexander Babichow or Dasha Babicheva. Babichow and Babicheva declined to respond to detailed written questions.
45:07When we went to Mastercard and told them that payments could be made to cloth off directly with their cards, they said, quote, Mastercard standards do not permit non-consensual activity. In recent months, we've provided our customers with guidance that the payment for such deepfake content is not permitted on our network. Black Box is produced by Alex Atak. The executive producer is Josh Kelly. The commissioning editor is Nicole Jackson. Original music and sound design by Rudy Zagadlo. The music supervisor is Max Sanderson. Additional reporting and translation support by Mateo Fogotto, Manisha Ganguly, Phil McMahon, Andrew Roth, Oliver Lachland, Katerina Malofieva and Yanina Sorokina.
45:52Miriam Aladib's interview was voiced in English by Karina Fernandez. Special thanks to Tom Burgess.
46:08This is The Guardian.
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