Deepfake Statistics 2026: Volume, Targets, Fraud and Abuse

This page collects the most recent verified deepfake statistics in one place, with the source of every figure. If you are here because a fake of you exists, start with our deepfake removal service or the step-by-step removal guide.

How many deepfakes exist, and how fast the count is growing

Estimates of total deepfake volume vary by methodology, but every recent dataset points the same way: sharply up, and faster than earlier projections assumed.

The Home Security Heroes census also found that 99% of individuals targeted in deepfake pornography are women, and that a convincing 60-second deepfake pornographic video can be produced from a single clear face photo in under 25 minutes at no monetary cost.^[2]

Who gets targeted: the gender skew of deepfake pornography

Most deepfake content is non-consensual sexual imagery of women, so that is where any look at targeting starts.

Between 90% and 95% of all deepfakes circulating online are non-consensual pornographic depictions, and roughly 90% of the individuals shown in them are women.^[5] A separate count of deepfake video files found 95,820 online in 2023 alone, a 550% increase since 2019. Of those videos, 98% were pornographic, and 99% of the people depicted in that pornography were women.^[2]

Entertainers and creators

Entertainment-industry figures make up most of the deepfake pornography targets, though not evenly across roles.

94% of deepfake pornography targets work in the entertainment industry. Within that group, singers account for 58%, actresses for 33%, social media influencers for 3%, models for 2%, and athletes for 2%.^[2] By country of origin, targets are most often South Korean (53%), followed by American (20%), Japanese (10%), and English (6%).^[2] Separately, 48% of surveyed US men report having viewed deepfake pornography at least once.^[2]

Women in public office

Targeting reaches well beyond entertainers into public office, and the gender skew there is sharper still.

An analysis of 11 well-known deepfake websites found more than 35,000 mentions of non-consensual intimate imagery depicting 26 members of the 118th US Congress, 25 women and 1 man. Women members were roughly 70 times more likely to be victimized than their male colleagues.^[6] The Markup independently confirmed the scope of that search.^[7] The 19th News's reporting on the same findings made the same point: 25 of the 26 targeted members were women.^[8] Reporting on deepfake pornography targeting elected officials shows this isn't limited to the US, with cases involving women politicians surfacing in multiple countries.^[9]

Where non-consensual deepfakes are distributed

Dedicated hosting sites, imageboards, and social platforms each play a different part in how this content spreads, and keeps spreading after enforcement action.

The face-swap and nudify app boom

FaceApp shows how large a single face-swap app can get while staying inside mainstream app-store rules.

FaceApp's 2024 revenue of $135 million^[10] and Business of Apps' independent estimate of roughly $150 million for 2025^[11] point the same way. A single face-swap app, operating fully within app-store terms, still has a sizable and growing paying user base years after its 2017 launch.

The nudify app economy

Alongside legitimate face-swap apps, a parallel market of "nudify" and clothes-removal apps has scaled just as fast, and several independent investigations have now sized it.

Separate investigations keep landing on nine-figure download counts: 705 million^[12], 483 million^[13], and ~480 million^[15]. They are overlapping but distinct snapshots of app-store inventory, not one static number, which itself shows how quickly the category churns as stores remove apps and new ones replace them.

How people find these apps

App stores are only part of distribution. Social platforms remain a major discovery channel for nonconsensual deepfake tools.

Traffic figures from Graphika^[16] and ISD^[17] were gathered roughly two years apart, yet both land near 21-24 million monthly visits to nonconsensual image-generation tools^[17][16]. That suggests a sustained, not shrinking, audience even as individual sites get removed. Roughly 90 schools across 28 countries have documented deepfake abuse incidents tied to this ecosystem.^[18]

Content volume and model proliferation

The underlying models and the content they produce have both grown sharply, beyond the apps themselves.

Academic research points the same way as the industry reports. The researchers behind the "Deepfakes on Demand" study found 34,000+ downloadable model variants with over 15 million cumulative downloads^[19], and 96% of a 2,000-model sample targeted identifiable women without evidence of consent^[19]. That is consistent with Home Security Heroes' finding that 98% of online deepfake videos are pornographic.^[2]

The model supply chain behind the content

The same targeting shows up upstream, in the tools used to generate deepfakes.

Researchers at the Oxford Internet Institute found roughly 34,000 to 35,000 publicly downloadable deepfake image-generator models on a single platform, Civitai, with about 15 million cumulative downloads since late 2022. 96% of the most-downloaded models were built to target identifiable women.^[22] A peer-reviewed companion analysis of the same dataset found the most popular models disproportionately targeted individuals from China, South Korea, Japan, the UK, and the US.^[23]

Fraud and identity-verification attacks

Financial fraud and identity-verification bypass show the sharpest year-over-year growth in the current data, outpacing even the raw volume growth in section one.

Fraud and identity vendors tell a consistent story. Sumsub's^[24] 11% share^[25] of global fraud attributable to deepfakes sits alongside Signicat's^[26] finding that 42.5%^[27] of financial-sector fraud attempts are now AI-driven overall, even as only 22%^[28] of financial institutions report having AI-specific defenses in place.

Sextortion and emerging scam patterns

Deepfakes and other AI-generated content also appear in financial fraud and extortion schemes, not only in pornography and CSAM.

Reports of financial sextortion to NCMEC's CyberTipline rose from 139 in 2021 to 10,731 in 2022 and 26,718 in 2023.^[29] 72% of Americans say they've seen a fake or AI-generated celebrity endorsement online.^[30] More broadly, 1 in 8 US adults report having been threatened with or subjected to non-consensual intimate imagery sharing, and women were 1.7 times as likely as men to be targeted.^[31] In identity-verification fraud specifically, deepfakes accounted for 24% of all fraud attempts against motion-based biometric checks in 2024.^[32] Scammers have also started building AI deepfake videos and voice clones that impersonate OnlyFans creators, using the fabricated persona to defraud fans directly.^[33]

Child abuse material and nudify sites

Deepfake growth isn't evenly spread across uses. Child sexual abuse material and non-consensual "nudify" tools show some of the steepest year-over-year increases in the dataset.

Sensity's 2019 baseline was an estimated total of roughly 15,000 deepfakes, 96% of them non-consensual pornography^[38]. Indicator's count of more than 40 million monthly nudify-site visitors in early 2026^[36] shows how far both the volume and the accessibility of this category have moved in six years.

South Korea: a documented crisis

South Korea has some of the most granular law-enforcement data on deepfake sex crimes anywhere, largely because a 2024 national scandal prompted a formal police response.

Public exposure and awareness

Beyond incident counts, survey data shows how many people have personally come across deepfake content and how confident they are at spotting it.

Key numbers at a glance

What to do if you are in these numbers

If you have found a fake of yourself, how to remove a deepfake video walks through evidence, reporting and search removal. If you are not sure one exists, see how to find out whether there is a deepfake of you.

Sources

Part of our deepfake removal service: detection by face, notices filed for you, and monitoring for re-uploads.