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| A petition filed Wednesday on the Cheong Wa Dae website urging strong punishment for deepfake porn producers and distributors has garnered more than 330,000 signatures over a single day. / Screen captured from Cheong Wa Dae official website |
By Lee Hyo-jin
Calls are mounting for the punishment of producers and distributors of deepfake porn, manipulated pornographic videos and photos, involving female celebrities without their consent.
Deepfake content refers to images, videos or audio that have been manipulated using machine learning and artificial intelligence. A growing number of digital sex crimes have been committed using this technology by portraying the victim's face in pornographic content.
A public petition filed Wednesday on Cheong Wa Dae's official website demanding thorough investigation and strong punishment on the issue has garnered over 330,000 signatures over a single day.
The presidential office gives an official response to petitions that gather more than 200,000 endorsements in 30 days.
The petitioner wrote that pornographic content falsely portraying female celebrities can be easily found on social media and internet websites.
"Deepfake porn is evidently a sex crime. Many female celebrities are suffering as a result of this content, which are being illegally sold online," read the petition, demanding tough punishment for producers, distributors and consumers of such content.
The writer added that there were a total of 14,768 deepfake porn videos worldwide as of October 2020 and the number is rapidly increasing, citing a report released by Deeptrace, a Dutch cybersecurity lab.
According to the report, about 25 percent of victims of the fake videos were found to be K-pop singers.
