Alejandro Cuevas is a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton's Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP) who researches deepfakes, disinformation, darkweb marketplaces, propaganda mills, and the manipulation of online trust.
Background and methodology
Cuevas describes his focus as "the parts of the internet that don't want to be researched. Deepfakes, disinformation, darkweb marketplaces, propaganda mills, the quiet manipulation of trust." His method centers on "first-person fieldwork in unindexed spaces," an approach relatively uncommon among academic content-moderation researchers.
Research on AI-generated nonconsensual intimate imagery
In an arXiv preprint (2602.02754, early 2026), Cuevas conducted an empirical study of three online forums hosting AI-generated nonconsensual intimate imagery (AI-NCII): 4chan, Website A, and Website B. The latter two were anonymized in publication to avoid driving new traffic to them. The study found that supply of and demand for AI-NCII grew across all three forums during 2025, following passage of the TAKE IT DOWN Act. This work provides empirical evidence relevant to whether the act's federal criminalization is shifting the ecosystem.
A trade-press distillation of the findings appeared as It's Too Soon To Tell If the TAKE IT DOWN ACT Is Working, published in Tech Policy Press on May 13, 2026, a status check timed to the law's one-year anniversary (It's Too Soon To Tell If the TAKE IT DOWN ACT Is Working (Cuevas, Tech Policy Press, May 13 2026)).
Relationships
- supports: TAKE IT DOWN Act (empirical-evidence base for its operative test); Synthetic Media / Deepfakes
- related: American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Access Now (civil-society NCII-policy coalition adjacents)