Women web sleuths fight AI deepfake porn
Harassers can fabricate invasive pornographic images portraying their targets.
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Daily TribuneHarassers can fabricate invasive pornographic images portraying their targets.
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SEOUL, South Korea (AFP) — Under banners emblazoned “Solidarity” and “We stand together with victims,” a group of South Korean women digital detectives dredges the internet for a scourge of illegal artificial intelligence-enabled pornography.
South Korea — home to the world’s leading smartphone and memory chipmakers — takes huge national pride in its tech prowess.
But the success story has a dark side: women suffer rampant “digital sex crimes,” rights groups say. Spycams film them in private while chat groups blackmail them for explicit content and share so-called “revenge porn” without consent.
AI-generated deepfakes are the newest threat. Using the generative technology and a picture of their victim’s face, harassers can fabricate invasive pornographic images portraying their targets.
At the National Center for Digital Sexual Crime Response — housed in an airy Seoul office — 23 women are tasked with turning the tide, trawling the web and filing delete requests backed by threats of legal action.
Last year, the group pulled down 318,000 videos and photos — deepfakes, spycam content and intimate imagery shared without consent — on behalf of 10,600 people, 75 percent of whom were women and girls.
“South Korea acted faster than others because not only digital sex crimes became common earlier than elsewhere, but also women spoke out against them just as quickly and vigorously,” Kim Mi-soon, the head of the government-founded center, told Agence France-Presse.
