In S​outh Korea, online misogyny has a new weapon: Deepfake sex videos

Feminist activists staging a rally against illegal deepfake content calling for the government to enact appropriate countermeasures in Seoul, South Korea, on Sept 6, 2024. The banners read ‘Regulate Internet platforms that encourage deepfake sexual crimes’. — AP

SEOUL, South Korea: In 2020, as South Korean authorities were pursuing a blackmail ring that forced young women to ​make sexually ​explicit videos for paying viewers, they found something else floating through the dark recesses of social media: pornographic images with other people’s faces crudely attached.

They didn’t know what to do with these ​early attempts at deepfake pornography. In the end, the National Assembly enacted a vaguely worded law against those making and distributing it. But that did not prevent a crime wave, using AI technolog​y, that has now taken the country’s misogynistic online culture to new depths.