The number of deepfake crime victims in South Korea reported to the state-funded Advocacy Center for Online Sexual Abuse Victims (ACOSAV) since its establishment six years ago has topped 2,000, the center said Wednesday.
This year alone, 781 deepfake crime victims sought help from the ACOSAV until last Sunday, marking an 11-fold increase over 69 victims reported in 2018.
All told, 2,154 deepfake crime victims have so far contacted the ACOSAV, set up by the Women’s Human Rights Institute of Korea under the gender ministry, and this year’s annual number is expected to exceed 1,000 at the current pace, the center said.
The ACOSAV said it has coped with the rising number of victims by mobilizing a self-developed content deletion support system, dubbed “DNA System,” but has difficulties responding to overseas platforms, such as Telegram. The center said the DNA System’s detection rate for illegally filmed and deepfake materials has exceeded 99 percent.
The education ministry also said that 196 cases of deepfa
ke crimes against students and teachers have been reported since January and 179 cases have been referred to law enforcement authorities for investigation. Students were victims in 186 cases while the other 10 cases targeted teachers.
The ministry formed an emergency task force to tackle the issue. Headed by the vice education minister, the task force will look into deepfake issues every week while establishing cooperative networks with police, the gender ministry and other related agencies, officials said.
Deepfakes refer to doctored photos, videos or audio taken from content on social media or other means without people’s consent, often created in a sexually explicit way and distributed online. Earlier this week, President Yoon Suk Yeol ordered his government to sternly respond to the recent proliferation of digital sex crimes using the deepfake technology.
Experts have called for efforts to heighten societywide awareness of the seriousness of deepfake and other digital sex crimes.
“Many creators and di
stributors of deepfakes say they did it out of curiosity or for fun, indicating they do not recognize the seriousness of their crimes. From the victims’ perspective, however, the deepfake crimes are a complete destruction of their personality,” a professor said.
Source: Yonhap News Agency