A few dozen women, wearing white masks, held up signs protesting against pornographic deepfakes. On the afternoon of Friday, August 30, several South Korean feminist collectives demonstrated in Seoul to fight these sex crimes that are flooding the country. While warnings against these hyper-edits, which superimpose faces on sexual content thanks to artificial intelligence (AI), have multiplied in recent months, concern turned into a tidal wave as summer draws to a close.
On August 22, the Hankyoreh media reported the existence of a Korean bot on Telegram that allows users, with a single click and for around 650 won (€0.44), to create a pornographic deepfake of anyone. The service has been used by almost 227,000 people. Following this revelation, investigations by internet users and journalists multiplied, uncovering a multitude of Telegram channels dedicated to sharing hyper-sexual edits of young South Korean women, most of them victims from the attackers' immediate circle.
Some of these channels are very specific, such as a chat room (now deleted) infiltrated by Le Monde that was dedicated to a single student named Jiwon. In this group, some 30 members shared photos of the young woman, while others used these photos to generate pornographic content.
Other channels, dubbed "Family Rooms," involved young men targeting their sisters or cousins, distributing deepfakes, secretly taking photos or even videos of incestuous touching. The various uncovered channels range from a few dozen members to tens of thousands of subscribers.
Schools remain the main targets of this string of Telegram networks. "In general, the channels each focus on a single middle school, high school or university, no doubt because they are run by young students from these institutions," explained Ji-Ah* (names marked with an asterisk have been changed), an internet user and social media activist who has been following the existing channels for the past week. A collective known as DataSec has even created an online map, the "Deepfake Map" (inaccessible at the time of publication of this article), listing all the schools supposedly targeted by a channel. On Friday, August 30, there were 632 of them: in a city like Jeonju, near the west coast, 10 of the city's 11 high schools were reportedly affected.
"The high school told us it was on the list," explained Seo-Yun*, a high school student in Pyeongtaek. "It's terrifying to think that your classmates might have fake nude photos of you. After the news broke, many girls removed all their photos from social media." This concern is also shared by teachers, as some female teachers have been targeted by their students. Given the popularity of some of these Telegram channels, Mi-Sun* is realistic. "It's highly likely that one or more of my students are involved in such actions," said this high school teacher in Seoul. "It's depressing..."
You have 56.93% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.