Police are investigating deepfake nude photos of Singapore Sports School (SSP) students that were created and spread by other students.
In response to queries from The Straits Times (ST), school principal Ong Kim Soon said SSP is “aware of the incident involving the creation and sharing of deepfake photos by our student-athletes,” adding that it has launched an investigation and lodged a police report.
A reader who identified himself as a parent of a victim had alerted ST in an e-mail yesterday about the deepfake nude images that were being circulated.
“Many parents of affected female students in Singapore Sports School are making police reports about deep fake nude photos of their daughters generated by male students from the school,” the parent said.
When contacted, the parent said that female teachers were also targeted, and that the school has offered affected students counselling.
The police have been provided with website links associated with the case, and they are assisting in requesting the removal of all related images from these sites, the message said.
“All students involved are being interviewed by the police, and their mobile devices have been temporarily confiscated for forensic examination,” it said.
This is to identify and remove any remaining inappropriate content.
One victim’s father said that a group of boys started generating and circulating deepfake nude images of their female schoolmates in June.
He said he was informed about the case on Nov 11 during a call with his daughter’s mentor.
He said the perpetrators used WhatsApp to communicate, and there were two groups – one generating the photos, while the other circulating them.
This incident follows growing concerns about deepfake-on-demand services becoming more publicly available, allowing users to generate realistic deepfakes within seconds – and often for free – simply by uploading a picture of someone’s face to an online website that uses artificial intelligence to combine the picture with a digitally rendered body.
Deepfake nudes are fake images or videos where a person’s face is placed on explicit content, such as photos or videos, using AI technology. — The Straits Times/ANN
