Georgetown Faculty Co-Author Runner-Up for 2025 Internet Defense Prize at USENIX Security 2025
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A paper co-authored by a research team from the University of Florida, the University of Washington, and Georgetown University has been named the runner-up for the 2025 Internet Defense Prize at USENIX Security 2025.
The team includes Elissa Redmiles, the Clare Luce Boothe Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Georgetown University and Yoshi Kohno, the McDevitt Chair in Computer Science, Ethics, and Society and professor in the Department of Computer Science and the Center for Digital Ethics at Georgetown University (most recently of the University of Washington). The work was led by University of Florida PhD student Cassidy Gibson, co-authored with PhD students from the Universities of Florida and Washington as well as faculty from the University of Florida. Kohno and Redmiles served as co-mentors on the project through their roles with the cross-institutional PRISM grant.
The paper, Analyzing the AI Nudification Application Ecosystem, investigates 20 AI “nudification” websites that create realistic nude or sexual images of people without their consent, and highlights the harmful, abusive, and profit-based ecosystem that these tools enable. The authors also address the ethical complexities inherent in this research, emphasizing necessary protections for both for the image subjects as well as for the researchers themselves. As Redmiles explains,
“Nudification tools are powered by the technology that computer science researchers innovate, including computer vision techniques such as inpainting. It’s critical for computer scientists to study the harms dual-use tools can create and to focus just as much on innovating as on protecting people from harm.”
The Internet Defense Prize, funded by Meta, recognizes and rewards research that meaningfully makes the internet more secure. The intent of the award is to inspire researchers to focus on high-impact areas of research. Per Redmiles “We’re honored that Meta recognized the importance of taking a technical security grounded, defense-in-depth approach to this rapidly growing abusive ecosystem.”
With regards to the collaborative effort, Kohno adds “It was wonderful to work with this strong team of researchers and to see all their hard work recognized by this award.”
Redmiles and Kohno will continue this research through a newly-awarded NSF grant with Sarah Bargal, Assistant Professor in Computer Science at Georgetown University and social scientists Professor Asia Eaton (Florida International University) and Professor Amy Hasinoff (University of Colorado Denver).