The seven Telegram channels hosting the undressing bot has a combined total of over 100,000 members. Although there may be duplicate across channel memberships the main group has more than 45,000 unique members.
Any Telegram user could send a photo to the bot and receive a faked nude back minutes later. This is a free service, although users are able to pay 100 rubles ($1.50 USD) for perks such as removing the watermark on the faked nude photos.
At least 100,000 women usually girls became victims of the undressing app
As of July 2020, the bot had already been used to target and create unclothed fakes of at least 100,000 women, the majority of whom had not given consent and were not aware that their privacy had been invaded.
“Usually it’s young girls,” Giorgio Patrini, the CEO and chief scientist of Sensity, who co-authored the report claimed. “Unfortunately, sometimes it’s also quite obvious that some of these people are underage.”
The Telegram community appears to have steadily grown in membership in 2020.
