On Saturday, Heejin, a university student in Seongnam, received a disturbing message on Telegram from an unknown sender. The content of the message announced that her pictures. And private data had been leaked/. And it called for “talking about this issue”. As soon as Heejin opened the chat. She was shocked to see one photo of her taken at school days followed by a very lewd picture of deepfake abuse in which her likeness was electronically placed on someone engaged in sexually lewd behavior somewhere else.
Making Heads with Deepfake Technology
Deepfake views wherein the face of a person is placed on a video that features fake sexual scenes are included in the list as dangerous practices advanced by technology. Heejin, sure this is not her real name for security reasons. Said that upon viewing these images. She felt “petrified and alone.” She soon came to understand that she was not the only one with such a sick fantasy.
Editor Exposes Some More Horrifying Detail
Two days before the message that Heejin received, a South Korean correspondent Ko Narin revealed a probe about the existence of deepfake porn rings in two head sociological institutions. Since she was sure that the issue was more problematic than what people thought, Ms Ko decided to look more into the internet and found hundreds of Telegram chat groups that contained deeply disturbing materials – users exchanged images of women they knew and within seconds turned them to deepfake pornographic videos.
Targeting Students of All Ages Ms. Ko’s investigation uncovered that these deepfake rings were not limited to university students as these were some of the deepfake-focused female chat lines. Many women also formed chat rooms in high schools and middle schools in some cases. Sometimes, when a particular student was the source of a lot of the content, the student who had the most images would get an avatar with her chat room. These rooms, which were sometimes called “humiliation rooms” or “friend of friend rooms,” had certain barriers to entry.
Public Outcry – Government Response Suddenly Ms Ko’s report in the Hankyoreh newspaper came out. And shocked South Korean people. Which led the public to an outpour of anger. The police stated on Monday that they are contemplating an investigation against the Telegram service too. As did the French authorities some time ago. When they had brought charges against the Telegram founder over some alleged criminal conspiracies associated with the app. The South Korean government has also pledged that there will be tougher measures meted out against the women involved, and the president has said men need better education on this.
Telegram’s Answer
To the BBC’s inquiry, Telegram has been adamant in its assertion that “doing away with illegal pornography. Is one of the harmful content that “the company actively removes from its platform.” However, Ms. Ko indicated that deepfake activities should not simply be avoided, as they are rather systematic and organized. One rather frightening chatroom focused on underage pupils from a single school and had more than 2,000 members.
