Where Have All the ‘Wizards’ Gone?

4chan, an imageboard platform where users are anonymous, opened its “Adult Requests” board (also referred to by its URL suffix, “r”) in 2004 as a venue for its users to discuss pornography and request help identifying the sources of sexually explicit images they shared. But in recent years, users on the board grew almost singularly focused on producing and trading synthetic, non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII) created by self-described “wizards” using generative artificial intelligence software.

Earlier this year, Open Measures published new research exposing the severity of abuse taking place on Adult Requests as the forum was becoming one of the most-active online venues for synthetic NCII – colloquially known as “deepfake porn.” Our findings drove broader recognition of the imageboard’s as a major node in the online ecosystem surrounding NCII abuse and raised questions about how laws against such content could be enforced on smaller platforms like 4chan.

4chan’s site administrators quietly shut down Adult Requests on May 21. Since then, its URL has returned an error page reading: “File not found.” As far as we’re aware, 4chan staff have not publicly explained why they closed Adult Requests or said whether they ever intend to reopen the board.

Adult Requests went dark the same day WIRED published an article highlighting the prevalence of AI-generated nude imagery on the board, and two days after the TAKE IT DOWN Act took effect in the United States – where 4chan is based – criminalizing the publication of NCII and imposing financial penalties on platforms that fail to remove it within 48 hours of receiving a takedown request.

‘It’s Only Fair’: 4chan Users Question Removal of ‘Adult Requests’ and Seek Refuge on Other Boards

The sudden disappearance of Adult Requests has gone mostly unnoticed by 4chan users, but some have shared posts questioning the board’s removal, expressing their desire to migrate their activities onto the site’s other boards.

On May 23, two days after Adult Request vanished, a user posted a thread on the site’s “Very Important Posts” (“vip”) board, where only users who pay for an annual “4chan Pass” can post, asking what happened. The thread only elicited a handful of replies, including a June 17 post that read, in part:

4chan follows US law, and legislation has made AI pornography edits (which was like 90%) of /r/ illegal. There was also a news article highlighting this. And it was taken down shortly after.

On the site’s “Adult GIF” (“gif”) board, which is dedicated to sexually explicit animated images and short videos, users expressed confusion about where the community that frequented Adult Requests had gone. A July 7 post on the Adult GIF board read:

Adult requests board used to be good with new content. No idea where everyone went now

Another post, shared on July 8, read:

kinda unrelated but, since this is an AI thread: what the ever loving fuck happened to the adult requests board? Was there any legal problems with it? Last I checked there were a lot of guys doing threads of AIs nudes of just about any chick they had a photo of. Was [its removal] because of it? Have these threads moved to another board/site?

Another post to Adult GIF, shared on July 9, argued that 4chan users should be able to solicit synthetic NCII on other boards since Adult Requests was unavailable:

Due to the fact that /r/ is gone, I feel like it’s only fair that we’re allowed to make requests on other boards, since we don’t have a dedicated Adult Requests board anymore.

On June 2, a user posting on 4chan’s “Worksafe Requests” (“wsr”) board – a non-explicit version of Adult Requests – said that requests for AI deepfakes should be directed to the site’s “Random” (“b”) board. The Random board has long been saturated with pornography and 4chan lists it among the “NSFW” (not safe for work) boards in its site directory.

Searching for Adult Requests’ ‘Wizards’ on Other Boards

In its final years, most activity on Adult Requests revolved around threads where users submitted images of other individuals (mostly women and girls) and requested synthetic NCII that depicted them. The board’s users adoringly referred to those who fulfilled requests as “wizards.”

That call-and-response dynamic effectively systematized the production of synthetic NCII on Adult Requests, setting it apart from other 4chan boards we observed that contained some similar material.

To assess whether this style of exchange migrated to another part of 4chan after Adult Requests closed on May 21, Open Measures searched for posts that mentioned a variation of “wizard” and at least one variation of a word signaling a request (like “please” or “help”) or a term associated with AI deepfakes (like “nudify”). We limited our search to 4chan’s 18 NSFW boards.

More than 1,100 posts shared on 4chan’s NSFW boards since Adult Requests closed matched our search query. Using our Activity tool to count how many appeared on each of the 18 boards, we saw that more than half appeared on Random (“b”) – a board that is ostensibly open to all kinds of content, but which is mostly saturated with pornography.

Caption: An Activity chart shows the number of posts matching our search query related to requests for synthetic NCII were identified on the 15 NSFW 4chan boards where they most often appeared between May 21 and Aug. 5, 2026.

Requests for Synthetic NCII on 4chan’s ‘Random’ and ‘Cams & Meetups’ Boards

We used our platform’s Discover tool to take a closer look at the posts our search identified on Random, and found hundreds of posts that appeared to mirror the sorts of requests we previously observed on Adult Requests, as seen in this July 27 post to the board:

Can any wiz help me nudify this whore? She’s got big fat titties that I’ve been itching to see like you wouldn’t believe.

The second-highest concentration of posts matching our query appeared on 4chan’s “Cams & Meetups” (“soc”) board, which serves as a venue for users to seek in-person and online connections related to sex. Similar to posts we identified on the Random board, we saw users on Cams & Meetups seeking to connect with “wizards” who could produce synthetic NCII. We also identified posts from self-identified “wizards” offering to create such material for others, as in this July 28 post to the board:

Comfyui ai wizard. Send a pic of your mom, sister, daughter 18+ and a clip for a face swap.

Many of the posts matching our query on other NSFW boards were false positives, reflecting the fact that communities on 4chan assign non-NCII related meaning to the term “wizard.”

4chan Moderators May Have Increased Enforcement Against Synthetic NCII

Threads on 4chan are automatically deleted to make way for new ones, meaning content on the site is inherently temporary – and especially so on boards that see higher volumes of activity. But in several instances during our research, we identified requests for synthetic NCII in active threads on the site that suddenly became unavailable – sometimes minutes after the requesting posts were made.

Using our platform’s Timeline tool to compare the number of posts matching our search query on Adult Requests, Random, and Cams & Meetups since Feb. 5, we did not see a meaningful shift in activity on Random or Cams & Meetups after the removal of Adult Requests. In fact, the daily volume of posts requesting synthetic NCII from “wizards” on Random and Cams & Meetups actually appeared to decrease, aside from a few days of isolated activity spikes.

Caption: A Timeline chart shows the daily number of posts shared between Feb. 4 to Aug. 5, 2026, that matched our search query related to requests for synthetic NCII on three 4chan boards where such requests most often appeared: Adult Requests, Random, and Cams & Meetups.

This might suggest that 4chan’s moderators are taking down threads requesting synthetic NCII at a higher rate than before they closed Adult Requests, signaling a possible shift in the site’s approach to the issue.

Our Take

Adult Requests was just one of a growing number of online venues for requesting, producing, and trading AI-generated NCII. As regulators around the world enact laws criminalizing the publication of NCII, it appears 4chan may be shifting its approach to policing such content.

While our findings signal that at least some amount of the abuse Adult Request became notable for has also appeared on other 4chan boards, they do not suggest that users of the board have simply relocated to another spot on the site. It’s likely that former Adult Request users, including the “wizards,” have migrated to communities beyond 4chan. Open Measures will continue looking for signals of where they may be headed next.